Pluto in Sagittarius – Brisbane 3rd August

[Dennis]

Hello,

I dusted off the C9.25 and as part of my re-familiarisation plan with good weather and little-used equipment, I thought I’d chase down Pluto. Presently, Pluto is located in the constellation of Sagittarius, shining at Magnitude: 14.06, some 31.64 AU from my back garden and some 32.49 AU from our Sun.

Here is an LRGB (5x5 mins L, 3x5 mins RGB) with the C9.25 and ST2000XM/CFW9 at the prime focus (F10, 2350mm). Pluto moved between the LRGB frames so it is a little smeared – how rude! The FOV is approx.. 17x13 arcmins at a pixel scale of 0.65 arcsec/pixel.

After a bit of a poor weather layoff, I was all fingers and thumbs but slowly, the imprinted memories of how to set up and use the equipment bubbled up into my conscious mind and soon the system was purring along. I wondered what celestial objects the lads and lassies at the Qld Astrofest would be observing or imaging as I sat under the light polluted skies of suburban Brisbane.:)

Cheers

Dennis

[RickS]

Nice capture, Dennis. Good to see you're back on the horse :thumbsup:

I just got back from 3 nights at Astrofest. I have 17.5 hours of NGC 7424 to process once I fix my broken image processing computer. The SSD died while I was doing the initial stack :(

[multiweb]

Good catch Dennis. Very nice indeed. :thumbsup:

[von Tom]

Nice one Dennis - excellent work :). I notice that the planet is coloured blue. I also imaged this once and found it blue as well, yet the Hubble images have is as a light brown. Does anyone know why this is?

Cheers,

Tom

[Quark]

Nice work Dennis, reckon its like riding a bike.

Regards
Trevor

[Dennis]

Thanks Rick, Marc, Tom & Trevor, I appreciate your comments. I remember taking an image of Pluto the very night before the IAU demoted Clyde Tombaugh’s “Planet” to “Dwarf Planet” status.

@Rick – sorry to hear about the SSD failure.:sadeyes:

@Tom – I haven’t performed a G2V calibration of my RGB filters yet, so the overall colour balance could be off in my image.:shrug:

@Trevor – yes, there are some skills that seem to become part of your DNA!:)

Cheers

Dennis

[Matt Wastell]

Great to see this little guy - thanks!

[bkm2304]

Thanks for the image, Dennis. I love the images of the out - of - the - way objects like Pluto. They have the romance of the astronomer looking for the elusive target!:D

Thanks again,

Richard.

[Lee]

Nice image Dennis.... the colours look great....

[John Hothersall]

Great work Dennis, I always wanted to get this one but it seems daunting to find especially in Sagittarius.

John.

[astronobob]

Good captures Dennis, glad you marked it for us, Interesting to see it can be had, cool :thumbsup:

[Dennis]

Thanks Matt, Richard, Lee, John and Bob, I appreciate your comments.:)

In terms of locating Pluto, I find that using The Sky or any of my other planetarium apps makes it a straightforward task, which is quite a contrast to Clyde Tombaugh’s incredibly taxing and demanding marathon search, blinking all those glass plates over several years!:)

Cheers

Dennis

[SkyViking]

Nice catch Dennis, it's always good to see a Pluto image :)
Interesting with the blue colour, but as you say it may be calibration. I think I recall it as being white or slightly yellowish in an image I took some years ago, but I'm not really sure what colour we should expect to see with our amateur equipment.

[ChrisM]

Well captured Dennis, and interesting re the colour.

I was looking at the detailed finder chart just the other day in Astronomy 2013, and like someone else remarked, it's pretty crowded out there at present! I was wondering how I would go trying to identify it. If I get a clear night, I might use your pic as a recent reference.

Thanks,
Chris

[strongmanmike]

Wow, very cool...and I can see New Horizons in there too :thumbsup:

Mike

[Dennis]

Thanks Rolf, Chris and Mike, I appreciate your comments.

@Chris: just be aware that Pluto can move quite significantly against the background of fixed stars. Here is a screen shot from The Sky X Pro showing the position of Pluto from Aug 3rd to Aug 10th for the FOV of my image (17x13 arcmin).

I noticed appreciable movement over the span of my imaging session where I was exposing though LRGB filters in turn – the little fella was rocketing along!:lol:

On a general note, I'm sure why some of the yellow stars appear to be red-shifted in my image….:P

Cheers

Dennis

[ChrisM]

Thanks for that extra info Dennis. I am surprised how fast it moves through that field. Looking at its path over the next month or so, it will slow down to do an about-face in September.

As a matter of interest, down to what magnitude stars were plotted on that The Sky screen?

Cheers, Chris

[AG Hybrid]

I love how your first image doesn't have a tag of Pluto on it.
"I'm telling you guys its right there. I promise it is. Right there. No, THERE!!! Can't you see it? Fine I'll point it out." :D

[hotspur]

clever work,well done:thumbsup:Not many astronomers here of the calibre to nail this-great to see a real astro image instead of the usual ubiquitous astro images of the milky way.

[Dennis]

Hi Chris

The faintest stars are between mag 18 and 19 and are from the “TheSkyX Pro Database Add On (http://www.bisque.com/sc/shops/store/TheSkyX-Pro-Database-Add-On-.aspx)”.

Cheers

Dennis

[ChrisM]

Thanks Dennis - no wonder the field looked so crowded.
Chris

[LewisM]

Great stuff!

I too had the same issues 2 noights ago - trying to remember my setup flow, how to do everything, and even spotting the alignment stars by memory. It all came back...

When I flicked on the hand controller, the date in it was 1 month and 3 days ago. And prior to that one, it had been almost 3 months!

And then after imaging my target for 2.5 hours, I noticed the frames were oh so slightly out of focus. So, I threw them out. Ah well, now the wind seems gone, there is tonight :)

I tried Pluto once - I can say I have seen it visually, and I did try imaging it, but the image scale was too small through the ED80 I used back then. I'll try it in the FL102S.

[naskies]

Nice work, Dennis.

[Dennis]

Hi Lewis,

You should not have any problems with imaging Pluto with your (gorgeous) Vixen FL102S refractor.:)

This image of Pluto the original “Planet” was taken on 22nd August 2006, just a day or so before the IAU demoted the planet on 24th August, to become a “Dwarf Planet”.:sadeyes:

It was taken with a Vixen ED102S F9 refractor and SBIG ST7E (older parallel model) CCD camera. The image is made up of 5x300 sec exposures.

Cheers

Dennis

[Jon]

It moves fast alright, compared with what you might think. I got it on two successive nights in May. From memory the FoV of these images are c. 10'

[astroron]

That sure quick movement.
I have seen Pluto visually a few times in the past,should give it a go one more time before it gets too faint even for the 16".
Cheers:thumbsup:

[Lee]

More movement than I thought - I tracked it over two nights last weekend.... here's a gif showing movement in 48hr, in fact the second frame is at about the same time as Dennis' image....