134340 Pluto - an 8 week journey through Sagittarius

[Lee]

A while back I decided to see if I could image Pluto, with a goto mount and CCD turned out to be no big deal.... it shows up in 10s subs no problem. During this time I realised that in September this year, Pluto would show an apparent retrograde motion as we overtake it's orbit on the inside.
I decided to try and record this as an animation. As often as weather would allow, I tried to get an image every few days, centred on the same RA/Dec. The turn captured is actually Pluto's turn from apparent retrograde motion to prograde motion.
Images are all stacks of 6-10 x 30s exposures, Atik-420, 200mm f/4 newt.
I used Sequence Generator Pro to capture, and more importanty, ensure I was correctly centred at the right place each night.
An interesting project, returning to the same point night after night, the effects of various weather conditons/seeing can be compared between sessions, the seeing varied from very good to atrocious in the sequence.
I've attached 3 images of the same starfield, showing the start, mid and end point of Pluto's movement. The animations are 22 frames, taken between 27 Aug and 18 Oct this year.

Animations -
Smaller (1.7MB) (http://files.astrodog.eml.cc/files/pluto-aug-oct2013sm.gif)
Larger & inverted (6MB) (http://files.astrodog.eml.cc/files/pluto-aug-oct2013.gif)

[strongmanmike]

Excellent Lee, enjoyed watching that, very well captured

Mike

[h0ughy]

fanbl00dytastic:thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :jawdrop: :bowdown: :bowdown: :prey2: :eyepop:

what a brilliant result Lee:thumbsup:

[Ric]

Top stuff Lee

Very enjoyable to watch.

[Mark_Heli]

Hi Lee,

That's an excellent animation - certainly something slightly different... It is amazing to see what can be captured by amateur astronomers.

Cheers,
Mark

[cometcatcher]

That is one cool animation.

[astronobob]

Magic work Lee :cool2: Ive never seen an Amination of Pluto, and the retrograde motion you've captured is awesome, well done, how very interesting :thumbsup:

[Lee]

Thanks gents! Was a fun little project to do, and the weather co-operated for the most part, only one big gap for clouds....

[Dennis]

Great project and terrific results Lee! I really enjoyed the animation and appreciate the work that went into acquiring the data and processing it.:thumbsup:

Makes you wonder why Clyde Tombaugh took so long to find Pluto!:whistle:;)

Cheers

Dennis

[allan gould]

Excellent animation Lee and a great use of SG Pro to put you back to the same area night after night. It goes to show that thinking slightly out of the box will result in a really interesting project.
Allan

[Lee]

Thanks Dennis - I suspect if his generation had access to the stuff amateurs have now, he would have found it much faster! :)




Thanks Allan - SG Pro was certainly up to the task... was able to center with 5-10 arcsec accuracy each night no problem at all.

[kinetic]

Lee,

Brilliant!!!!!:thumbsup::thumbsup:
AOTW!;)

Steve

[multiweb]

That's really cool to watch Lee. Enjoyed that a lot. Well done. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[seeker372011]

Cool animation.. Great project

Having never tried to image Pluto my first reaction was...

That tiny dot really doesn't deserve to be called
a planet!

[RobF]

Fascinating!
(I want an emoticon with one eyebrow raised!?)

[Astroman]

This is so cool! Well done on a great project.

[lazjen]

That was great - it was definitely a good idea to do.

[John Hothersall]

Good work, very informative to see such a dim object over a good time span.

John.

[Derek Klepp]

Thanks Lee your work is appreciated. Not something everyone attempts.
Cheers Derek

[Matt Wastell]

I enjoyed that - reminded me of the photographic plates that were used to find planets all those years ago!