asteroid 2006 VV2

[Terry B]

This asteroid is passing very close to earth over the next few days. See http://skytonight.com/observing/home/2006VV2.html
Anyone looking for it or trying to image it?

[Dennis]

Weather permitting, I'll be giving this a go. Forecast is not too good (Brisbane) for Saturday, Sunday or Monday, but improving Tuesday when the asteroid will have passed its closest point, but be at a greater altitude in our Southern skies.

Cheers

Dennis

[h0ughy]

given those times, what is that translated in Austrailian speak?

[Terry B]

The ephemeris is available at
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/Ephemerides/Unusual/K06V02V.html
I will plug it into skymap tonight when I get home to produce a local map. If you want I could then post that map but it is pretty easy to do yourself.

[Astroman]

weather permitting I will give it a go, fairly bright so should be able to pick it up, easily enough. It goes right through the heart of Leo too.

[Dennis]

Here is a chart from SkyTools for 1st April 2007. SkyTools is a very feature and function rich application for observation planning, charting, and logging. This example is a Naked Eye – Finder – Eyepiece Chart for my Mewlon 180.

More info at http://www.skyhound.com/cs.html

Cheers

Dennis

PS - Note the almost full Moon close by!

[higginsdj]

The Binary Asteroid Survey I am part of has been monitoring this one (photometrically) for a while now. It's going to be moving quite fast to image anything (other than usuing stack and track ion very short integrations) until around 5th/6th April when at mag 12/13.

Cheers

[Dennis]

Here are a couple of my previous efforts for (4179) Toutatis and 2004 XP14; the latter was a very, very tough capture - I was incredibly lucky to record anything at, all given its speed, an obstructed horizon, the incoming dawn and approaching clouds.

Cheers

Dennis

[Astroman]

Geee I hope the cloud clears before tomorrow night...

[circumpolar]

Have a look at a 3-D simulation.

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/db_shm?sstr=2006+vv2&group=ast&search=Search

ZOOM in and place Earth at the center.

Don't forget to play with the buttons and look at the different angles :D .

[DobDobDob]

Thanks for the URL, I killed half an hour on it, very neat :thumbsup:

[Terry B]

I imaged toutatis in 2004. Each exposure was about 20 secs with download time between the exposures~20 sec gap. The field is 13x 9 arcmins. It was fairly zooming across the field.

[Astroman]

Looking good here tonight, although the moon may cause a few headaches, I will also have to setup in a different position as the neighbors tree i smack bang in the path area.

[Dennis]

Here is a SkyTools three panel chart for tonight (Sat 31st March). It appears that the altitude of 2006 VV2 peaks around 21:48 pm AEST, some 42 degrees above the horizon. Magnitude 10.1

Cheers

Dennis

[Dennis]

Latest score from Brisbane……Clouds 1, Asteroid 0.

Been outside since 7:30pm and its now almost 9:30pm and so far nothing, rien, zip, zilch, nadda. Didn’t even get to polar align using the Polar Alignment Scope through the sucker holes – oh well, at least I’ll get my beauty sleep (and lord only knows, I need it!) and live to try again tomorrow, and the day after…..

Good luck to any observers and imagers tonight.

Cheers

Dennis

[Astroman]

Totally CLEAR here :)

Taking 10 pics @ 2mins each atm, guiding on a close 7th mag star. For some reason pics are turning out red and there is a weird reflection in it, might be because the moon is only 18degrees away, but I did increase the size of the dew shield

[gaa_ian]

Was planning on looking at that one here, but clouds, clouds, clouds !

[astroron]

No joy here also Clouds, Clouds, and More Clouds !

[Astroman]

My mount disconnected itself from the laptop part way through the exposures, the guidestar I was using went for a wander and then went MIA. The shutter on the camera wasnt working (DSLR shutter problem) So all up, I learnt you dont walk away from your equipment until you are 100% happy its working LOL. Still dont know what the loopy thing is on the image.

[ballaratdragons]

Andrew,

Regardless of all the difficulties you had, I can still see how the Asteroid moved among the stars!!! Good work, even though Murphy had a field day :lol:

P.S. The blurry white thing is the Giant Fish Nebula :lol:

[DaveGee]

I managed to image it. I have uploaded a short movie to YouTube...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHVJHHxCGj4

Regards
DaveGault

[DobDobDob]

That's great Dave, but I started looking at your other contributions and loved the Lunar graze ZC 2268, this was stunning, I've got to go with you on one of these nights :P

See you tomorrow :thumbsup:

[Terry B]

Very nice.I didn't get to see it at all due to clouds and work.:(