Elon's Tesla

[DiscoDuck]

Tried to get an image of Elon Musk's Tesla on Saturday night. It was already 1.2m km away and magnitude 17.7. Also moving fast enough that in a 5 min exposure it was moving by 10-15 pixels or so. Hence was hard to capture it as longer exposures simply resulted in a longer path (the image was Elongated :D) rather than a brighter target. But the animation I think helps to make it clear it's there (slightly!) above all the noise!

Animated gif is on Astrobin here (https://www.astrobin.com/333578/).

Paul

PS My wife suggested he should have left the headlights on to make it easier :P

[Stevec35]

Nice one and good pun

[theodog]

Nice one Paul,
I wondered how long it would be before it appeared here.

Your image has it well above the noise level. Some would kill to have such a S/N ratio.
It's far from a deep space object yet though.

Another asteroider technique is to stack images on the object, ie one image of the object and the stars trailed.
This builds up the signal over the background.

Well done.:thumbsup:

[multiweb]

Great catch! :thumbsup:

[DiscoDuck]

Thanks guys.



Yeah. I probably should've posted this on the Solar System part of the forum?? Though it is fairly distant compared to most other cars! :)

[Dennis]

Really nice work and well captured.:thumbsup:

Cheers

Dennis

[strongmanmike]

Yes, very cool indeed Paul! Other than the Moon rovers, that's the first image I have ever seen of a car in space :P

Mike

[topheart]

Good work!!
Cheers,
Tim

[Bart]

Go Duck! You rock! Top stuff. :eyepop:

[Placidus]

Dim object brilliantly imaged. What a feat!

[DiscoDuck]

Thanks all.

[rally]

Now thats neat !
Never thought I'd be looking at an image of a NEO that was in fact a terrestrial automobile on IIS.

I wonder if he will put the next one on the moon and have it remotely controlled and solar charged - every week after recharging he can take it for a spin !

[Ryderscope]

Very clever.

[DiscoDuck]

Ta. It's certainly an unusual object!!
:astron: :driving:

[RickS]

Well done, Paul!

[DiscoDuck]

Thanks Rick.

[Paul Haese]

Very cool Paul and a unique memory of this odd piece of space junk. I doubt I will hear anything stranger than launching a care into space again. Though I could be pleasantly surprised.

[gregbradley]

Great work Paul
Who would have thought a few years ago you would be imaging a car in space!
Greg

[RichardKirby]

Your wife is quite the wit!

[DiscoDuck]

Thanks guys.



She likes to think so! :)

[DaveNZ]

Very cool. A Tesla at 1.2 million km.

[DavidTrap]

Nicely done.

I imaged it last night at 3 million km and mag 19 - fairly confident I have it as the position matches the predictions from the NASA site. I'm having another go tonight with longer exposures.

DT

[DiscoDuck]

Thanks.



Wow. I look forward to seeing that. Please post it on this forum.

[DavidTrap]

On a further look at the data this morning, I'm now not 100% sure of my results at the moment - need to do some astrometry before I'm will to say I definitely captured it.

DT