Pluto in the Teaspoon 2-frame animation

[andyc (Andy)]

Well it's an opportune moment to share a Pluto snapshot, though not perhaps the highest resolution Pluto images of the week

I took a couple of frames last week, but didn't get anything like the consecutive series of clear nights I had last year for a good animation with the newer scope.

Nonetheless, here's Pluto on the 6th and 10th July, with an animated gif of the movement, and individual wide and crop frames from 10th July. All images 7 x 3-minutes with a 150mm f/5 Newt and EOS 60D. The wider view includes one of the Teaspoon's stars in Sagittarius, gives a bit of a feel for how faint it is.

Larger animation here

Larger individual frames in this album.

[multiweb (Marc)]

Nice one Andy. I was surprised how fast it moves.

[andyc (Andy)]

Yeah, it's quite brisk against the stars... alas a lot of it is caused by us moving! The annual retrograde loops overlap a little, so Pluto progresses eastwards a little less than the size of the loop each year, making it's multiyear path look like a stretched Slinky.

I did a 6-day animation last year with a DSLR and telephoto lens, but unfortunately the weather conditions haven't been so kind this year.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Andy Tombaugh

[andyc (Andy)]

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

Andy Tombaugh

Dagnabit, just 85 years too late...

I quite fancy going after some of the other brighter KBOs too, even if that's not perfectly straightforward for my setup and location (most of them are north-ish, 17th mag and fainter, and I'm south of the Sydney light dome).