Shallow space - prox centauri motion

[ChrisM]

Three images of Proxima Centauri taken over 24 months 2013 - 2015.

Chris

[AlexN]

Very cool.

[Placidus]

Chris, that's stunning great wonderful! But you have to tell us some of the technical details. What focal length? What field width?

In my ignorance, I'd always thought that 11th mag proxima was "near" alpha on the sky, and I wondered why your shot was not flooded with light from alpha, but it seems it's something like two degrees away.

[Atmos]

Considering that you know the distance to Prox Cent, you've got it's motion, you can guess an incident angle of 0 (ie. we're looking at the system face on) and try to calculate its orbital period :)

Cheers,
Colin

[Camelopardalis]

Great stuff Chris, well done :thumbsup:

[ChrisM]

Thanks all for the comments.

The three images were taken using a Nikon D7100 on an M14 SCT, fl = 3556 mm. The field of view is approximately 22 x 15 arc minutes. Each image is a single exposure, and from memory the first two years were 60 secs each, and this year's was 30 secs.

Registration and conversion to jpeg format was done in PixInsight, and I used GIFmaker.me to create the animation.

Prox Cent is located approx half way between Alpha Centaurus and Alpha Circinus.

I might have a crack later at estimating apparent speed, but I don't think I (or any of you for that matter) will live long enough to see the curve of its orbit.

Cheers, Chris

[Placidus]

Thanks for those details, Chris.

I read that Proxima has a proper motion of 3.85 arcsec per year, so just under 8 sec over your period of observation. Very nice.

[ChrisM]

Here is a photo of Alpha - shining brightly in the lower LH corner, with Prox diagonally opposite in the RH corner (vertically above the blue artifact, near the top of the photo). FoV is 81 x 122 arc minutes.

Chris

[rustigsmed]

that is awesome chris - great work i guess youre going to have to keep going forever!