Eris animation - 18/19th to 19/20th Sept

[Dennis]

Hello,

Here is an animated gif from the nights 18/19th and 19/20th September 2006. I have marked the positions of Eris with the dates to prevent confusion with the dashed trail of the other (as yet unidentified) asteroid (the dashes cover the period 12:41am to 01:34am AEST on 20th Sept).

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/downloads/Dennis-Eris.gif (WARNING: 400K)

Thanks again Mike, for providing this upload facility to share these larger files.

Dennis

[John K]

That's awsome Dennis!

That really faint asteroid is sure moving fast. Hope you're discovered something!

[ving]

this picture says it all...

[h0ughy]

a post it note?:lol: male delivery? oh I know, return to sender...... mighty fine effort Dennis, thanks for PUSHING the envelope:P :D ;) ! :thumbsup:

[h0ughy]

ok here goes I think it is.........................

[EzyStyles]

:eyepop: :eyepop: :eyepop: :prey2: :prey2: :prey2: .. im speechless.....

[Ric]

Hi Dennis,
that is one great animation. I love all the detail that you added as well.

fantastic

[Dennis]

Hello,

Thanks for the nice words and the clever, symbolic message Ving and thanks to H0ughy for explaining it to me – I was a bit slow on the uptake!

Thanks also Dave for your efforts with Star Atlas pro – I must look further into this amazing program.

In the end, I sat down and err…read the manual. CCDSoft (camera control and image capture program) and The Sky Pro 6 actually integrate together and found the asteroid for me, labelled it, and also identified another one that I should have picked up but somehow missed.

Here are some screen prints showing some of the steps. Basically, CCDSoft knows the RA and DEC coordinates of the image and so it launches The Sky and performs an image overlay. I already knew this and had used it to identify field stars, but I did not realise that I could also perform an asteroid search as well. I downloaded the asteroid database (88M download) from the IAU Minor Planet Center at:

http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/mpc.html

and then loaded this into The Sky. The Sky then plotted (with green circles) the positions of asteroids in my image – really neat eh! In the meantime, I had also visited the JPL Small-Body Database Browser at:

http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi

to find a list of potential candidates. Anyhow, the final result identifies this interloper as Asteroid 116200 (2003 XY14) discovered on 15 Dec 2003. There was another asteroid in the FOV also, 81407 (2000 GO88), but I didn’t record it at mag 18.5 – not sure why?

Cheers

Dennis

[h0ughy]

wow, thats impressive Dennis!

[ving]

hey, credit where its due. your work here is brilliant :)
:thumbsup:

[glenc]

Great work Dennis. :thumbsup:

[CoombellKid]

Top effort Dennis!!

and that's the first time I've ever seen Eris

regards,CS sunny days

Rob