Miranda…maybe?

[Dennis]

Tuesday night found me outside trying to record the elusive Miranda, a 16.5 mag satellite of Uranus, never appearing more than 9 arc secs from the glare of the planet’s mag 5.67 disc.

On the computer screen it was easy to distinguish the 4 brighter Uranian satellites; Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon, but Miranda was nowhere to be seen, hidden in the glare.:(

I took a series of 1 sec, 2 sec, 5 sec, 10 sec and 30 sec images so that I could later search for Miranda and the best series appeared to be the 60 x 10 sec frames, so I processed them in AS!3 and as luck would have it, a Miranda candidate appeared, frustratingly located in one of the diffraction spikes of the ‘scopes 4 vane spider.:rolleyes:

After a little teasing out of the data, I did find a faint collection of photons that coincided with the plotted position of Miranda as displayed in SkyTools 4. I overlayed a Screen Capture from ST4 to show the plotted position.

I probably would not bet the house on this result, but it is my best effort to date.;)

Name Mag PA° Sep"
Ariel 14.3 181.2 13.8
Umbriel 15.0 351.0 19.5
Titania 13.9 182.7 31.4
Oberon 14.1 340.5 42.0
Miranda 16.5 190.5 9.1

At the time of these observations, the planet Uranus (51,118 km dia.) was some 18.8 AU from the Earth with a Sun Distance of 19.8 AU.

Tak Mewlon 210
Tak x1,6 Extender
ASI1600MM Pro Cooled.

Cheers

Dennis

[glend]

Your title drew me in....And here I thought Miranda was at the edge of the Burnham quadrant, embedded deep into Reaver space, and is the sole planet of the protostar Burnham.
;)

[Atmos]

I’m with Glen here, I was on a completely different line of thought haha

Fantastic capture though! All you need now is an 8” APO to get rid of that pesky diffraction spike haha

[John Hothersall]

I think your house is safe as you definitely got Miranda. You need good seeing to get more photons on target, I thought seeing was a bit avg according to predictions.

John.

[multiweb]

Awesome catch Dennis. Pretty extreme imaging. :thumbsup:

[Dennis]

Thanks Glen and Colin, it seems a live a somewhat sheltered life as I had to Google the topic to understand the alternate context.:)

Cheers

Dennis

[Dennis]

Thanks John and Marc, I appreciate your comments.

@John - most times I try to see if Miranda is lurking in my image before I investigate via a star chart, as on a couple of occasions, the diffraction patterns around the object have produced spurious or transitory intensity variations that could be mistaken for a real object.:)

Cheers

Dennis

[Dennis]

Here is a screen capture from SkyTools 4 Imaging, for Uranus and the 5 brighter moons as viewed from Brisbane tonight, 24th Oct 2019 at approx. 11:55pm.

The separation between Miranda and Uranus is approx. 9 arc secs which is approaching maximum.:)

I'll give it another go to see if I can position Miranda away from my spider's diffraction spikes.:rolleyes:

Cheers

Dennis

[gary]

Hi Dennis,

That's extremely impressive! Well done!

Sky & Telescope Moons of Uranus Observing Tool :-
https://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/interactive-sky-watching-tools/the-elusive-moons-ofuranus/#

[Dennis]

Thanks Gary, I appreciate your comments.:)

Thanks for the link to the S&T Tool, it looks to be a good tool to grab a quick view to see when the 5 brightest moons are at greatest elongation.

Very impressive image by Ed Grafton for 2002 using an ST-5...although the C14 would have helped.;)

Cheers

Dennis