Tonight's the night for the closest approach of this 14th Mag Asteroid @ 2.5 Lunar distances away. It's moving quite quickly at a tad under 1 arc min per min.
This is a very deep southern object (-68 degrees last night, and moving north), so only we antipodeans will get a chance to see it at its brightest!
I captured this footage last night whilst doing some positional astrometry and posted it up on youtube:
Thanks Tony, thought you would be up at Linden with the big dob I've been getting heaps of nice messages from the pros in the states - I recon they thought no-one would bother, seeing its so far south.
One more observation tonight and I'll have enough data to get a reliable plot for the MPC- once I've found it again (I wandered off for a cuppa, and it wandered off too!)
Thanks peter, it was fun to be picked up, and gave me some interaction with the team at Mt Palomar observatory who were looking at clouds...
Most importantly though, I managed to get enough data to provide a meaningful report together. MPC require 2 or 3 observations over 2 or 3 nights to ensure accuracy at sub arc-second levels and to be certain of ruling out any spurious results.
Thankfully for us, Aussie Amateur Hristo Pavlov has done an immensely good job of writing software to streamline the process for video astronomers. My initial results are looking good with tight error bars. The plots are angled due to the rapid movement of the object - a normal asteroid would be flat!
Thanks Ingrid. That one was quite a way out from its expected orbit, so my measurements certainly came in handy.
The next quick one is 2006 DP14 in March, but there are a few in between, including a very nice one (2013 XY8) that I missed due to the weather that came from nowhere just a few days ago!
I'm working towards an Academy Award in the category "Most nerdy astro stuff by an amateur". Recon I must be getting close now with nearly 50,000 views of a faint dot moving
