Could This Be An Asteroid

[sydneystargazer]

We were taking pictures of Comet Elenin today and we noticed over time that one of the specks of light to the right of the comet was moving towards the bottom of the picture.

There were no asteroids , satellites or planets in the area at the time.

The 2 pictures were taken at 22:00 UTC and 23:23 UTC

You can see comet Elenin moving in the pictures just left of center.


Roy
sydneystargazers

[renormalised]

Well the green trail of dots in both images is of 2 different objects. I gather the first piccie is the comet. The second piccie could be anything. Did you check for the usual suspects??. None there....could be a top secret satellite or vehicle that hasn't any filed orbital data. Plenty of them about, especially US satellites/vehicles. Could be ET...you never know:)

Might be a new asteroid??

[sydneystargazer]

I used a dotted line to point to the moving object in each of the pictures.
Comet elenin is in both pictures just left of center and moved about a millimeter towards the top right corner.

The object was moving in the opposite direction at a faster rate.

Usual suspects were checked and are clean.

[renormalised]

If that's the case, then that object has changed orientation and direction of travel between the two pics. Look at the geometry of the green line in relation to the stars. Unless you've captured two different objects.

[sydneystargazer]

I am not sure what you are referring to the green line for ... it is only a pointer I added to the picture to point to the object that was moving down the picture. I don't understand what it's geometry to the stars has to do with it. It does not show direction of movement or anything like that.

I am pointing to only one object which is moving down the picture from right to left. You will see in each picture it has moved and appears to be brighter or larger in the second picture.

[renormalised]

I thought that was a track of an object....my mistake.

I can hardly see anything those lines are pointing to, except for a very faint blue dot in the second piccie.

[renormalised]

What's the limiting mag on your scope??

The dot could be anything. But let's work on the premise it's artificial.

Try looking for it again tonight, or as soon as possible.

[sydneystargazer]

I watched it move over 2 hours. It has gone now.

[renormalised]

You want to try and see if it's in another part of the sky. Trace out its apparent path across the sky.

[Clayton]

It seems to have clearly moved to the left in the second image. So much stuff out there thoug , who knows?

[Rob_K]

Hi Roy, I'm not sure about those times. 22:00 UTC is 8am & 23:23 is 9:23am, if you're in Sydney. :shrug: C/2010 X1 is certainly moving through that field at the moment, but very slowly. The movement in less than an hour and a half at that scale would barely be noticeable (around 10 arcseconds, or less than the distance between the pair of dim stars immediately to the right of the first marked dot).

On spec, I ran X1's ephemeris position for 10pm (22:00 EST) and your second shot shows a brownish dot in roughly the right position but there is no sign of it in the first pic (and nothing shows there in DSS plates).

I ran a 15-arcmin radius of the comet's position through the MP checker for 10pm and the only result was a mag 19.1 asteroid (mp), 2000 CD83, which was nowhere near the action and too dim anyway. The second marked dot you have looks very purplish to me, like a hot pixel, but I'm assuming you have a set of subs that show it moving, and these two subs are the end-points.

The left-hand of the pair of dim stars to the right of the object marked in the first pic is V-mag 16.64 so you're going quite deep. I can't understand why X1 isn't a reasonably bright object with a short tail in your shot, at ~mag 14. Unless I'm not picking it up.

Anyway, if you can sort out the time we might get a better handle on what is or isn't there. Good stuff! :thumbsup:

Cheers -

[sydneystargazer]

I reserved time on a telescope in the Canary Islands.

[renormalised]

Roy probably meant EST, not UTC :)

[Rob_K]

Ah, thanks Roy! Forgetting the age we live in! :lol: Will run it through again!

Cheers -

[Rob_K]

OK, MP checker shows only X1 in a 15' radius of ephemeris positions at those times (down to mag 20). And I can see Elenin now, LOL! :rolleyes: So no help here but I've overlaid DSS plates with crosshairs generated on comet ephemeris positions for those times so others can pick it out.

Good luck in your search Roy!

Cheers -