Hello,
Back in Sept 2006 I managed to record the apparent movement of magnitude 18.7 dwarf planet Eris over 4 consecutive nights. I recently re-visited this data with my newly acquired Photoshop skills and managed to extract an animation of these events. I also surprised myself by “discovering” another (known) asteroid lurking in the data, the magnitude 18.6 object 2000 GO88 which I recorded entering the field (at top) on 19th Sept with 3 x 10 minute exposures and then exiting the same field (at bottom) on 20th Sept, again using 3 x 10 minute exposures – a pure stroke of luck!
On the 20th Sept the magnitude 17.1 asteroid 2003 XY14 flitted across the 6 x 10 minute frames to be followed on 22nd Sept by the magnitude 17.6 asteroid, 1999 SV7. A busy piece of sky!
Eris was discovered on January 5, 2005 and lies some 96.7 AU from the Sun, at roughly three times the distance of Pluto. According to Wiki, with the exception of some comets, Eris and its moon Dysnomia are the most distant known natural objects in the Solar System.
Here are some useful links describing Eris:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eris_(dwarf_planet)
http://www.planetary.org/news/2006/0...ins_Solar.html
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/E/Eris.html
I’ve attached an animation showing only the apparent motion of Eris and also a “flattened” image showing all the asteroid action recorded over the 4 night’s imaging runs. Along with a few faint PGC galaxies, I also managed to identify a magnitude 19.21 star in the field.
Thanks for looking!
Dennis