ALMOST Pluto 8th august

Chrissyo (Chris) · #1 09-08-2006, 12:04 AM

EDIT: Turns out I'm not quite there yet! (see replies below). This topic may need moving, though I'm not really sure where!

What a night I've had. A satellite went through my eyepiece FOV whilst I was attempting to drift align the eq6 and I saw my first fireball. Anyway, since I have had my eq6 (a week and one day) the sky has been getting brighter for me (not literally). It makes it so much easier for visual work! I havn't gotten then hang of alligning yet, one problem being because I don't have a very clear sky view to the south

Regardless, I've been practising and I hope I'll be up to getting some dso shots in soon enough.

Anyway, earlier tonight I came back to the computer to work on some assignments for school. Naturally I got bored and decided to jump on starry night to have a look for targets. Just for fun, I decided to have a look at Pluto and was pleased to see it was located basicly next to a mag 3.5 star. I thought "I wonder if I can image that?" so I drew a rough map of the location on a scrap of paper and went out. Took me a little while to find the mag 3.5 star cause of the full moon, but I did manage to track it down. I was very happy to see that Pluto was visable with the naked eye!! (Everything was right where it was supposed to be, I was quite amazed). So I threw my sony digicam in my home-made camera bracket thingy and got a few exposures before a huge bank of clouds came over.

Because I'm still learning when it comes to alligning, there are some star trails there. Also, my camera isn't the best quality (can someone give me their 350d or 20a for free?

) and its certainly reflected in the picture. Also, because of the 150kb limit for uploading here the quality is decreased even more. Now for the specs - I took it with my 10"GSO newt on a standard eq6 (badly alligned) with the standard 32mm bintel/gso eyepiece. I believe the pic I have chosen to post (the best one of the lot) was a 15-20sec exposure at 4 megapixels at ISO400.

Sorry for the long post!

[1ponders] (Paul) · #2 09-08-2006, 07:58 AM

I hate to be the bearer of bad news Chris, but I don't think it is Pluto. I wish it was for you, but unfortunately at mag 14 that is roughtly 100,000 time fainter than the faintest star you can see naked eye on the darkest night.

If you have a look at this screen dump from SN pro your star TC6325-1738-1 is HIP86104. What you are seeing for Pluto is probably TYC6235-2428-1. You were right on the money for direction and placement, unfortunately Pluto is just too dim.

Chrissyo (Chris) · #3 09-08-2006, 04:49 PM

Rats, I knew it was too good to be true!

Of course, I place all blame on starry night for not giving me enough stars to work with

However, I think I've been bitten by the hunt! This shot was only made during a full moon, with only a 32mm eyepiece with a 15-20sec exposure, and the max my camera can make 30secs... (if I still dont have enough I can always throw the old film camera on and let it go for a while

) So begins the great Pluto hunt of 2006! (Do you reckon I stand a chance?

)

[1ponders] (Paul) · #4 09-08-2006, 04:54 PM

Check out Dennis' shots of Triton and Uranus' moons. There are in the same ball park as pluto. He has a slightly smaller aperture than you so it would be possible. A lot of it will depend on your camera and getting your mount really well tuned and polar aligned.

[1ponders] (Paul) · #5 09-08-2006, 04:56 PM

ps . I know what you mean. This tracking down the elusive is great fun. Frustrating at times though

[1ponders] (Paul) · #6 09-08-2006, 04:57 PM

Can you adapt you video bracket to mount your still camera, collect a heap of 30 sec stills and stack them in Registax?

BTW is you really want to give it a go, you are welcome to borrow my LPI, which goes for up to 16 sec. You might have some luck with that.

astrogeek (Leon) · #7 09-08-2006, 05:42 PM

When you said visible with the naked eye did you mean though the scope or just looking up at the sky. If you meant through the scope (not usually what neked eye means but I think this might be what you meant) than it could be pluto. If you meant just looking at the sky then it ain't pluto

.

EDIT:When I look at your photo I feel that what you have labeled as pluto is too bright. It would look more like very faint star right in the middle. Hope you manage to get it though

Chrissyo (Chris) · #8 09-08-2006, 07:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by [1ponders]

Can you adapt you video bracket to mount your still camera, collect a heap of 30 sec stills and stack them in Registax?

BTW is you really want to give it a go, you are welcome to borrow my LPI, which goes for up to 16 sec. You might have some luck with that.

Yup, I was using my still camera to take this shot (about a 15-20sec exposure). I made a new bracket for it the other day before my mount arrived. So far its turned out to work quite well. I'm having difficulties getting a nice focus though, because when I point the scope at some object with no bright stars, there is nothing in the viewfinder bright enough to get it nice and crisp. I guess this is where the hartmann mask I made a few months ago comes into good use.

Quote:

When you said visible with the naked eye did you mean though the scope or just looking up at the sky. If you meant through the scope (not usually what neked eye means but I think this might be what you meant) than it could be pluto. If you meant just looking at the sky then it ain't pluto .

EDIT:When I look at your photo I feel that what you have labeled as pluto is too bright. It would look more like very faint star right in the middle. Hope you manage to get it though

Yup, when I said naked eye I meant through the telescope. And yes, what I thought was Pluto was the little star just next to it. I'll be giving it another go visually when the moon has gone away in a few days or so. (And yup, I missed Pluto in the shot - it was an unlucky coincidence that Starry night only showed pluto being there and not the other star. I think I need to find some starcharts that have a better magnitude depth.

[1ponders] (Paul) · #9 09-08-2006, 07:57 PM

It operates a lot differently to starry night but Cartes de Ciel is a ripper and it's free. It also integrates with the Virtual Moon Atlas (also for free) and a number of astroplanning software packages like Deepsky (not free) and Astroplanner (free).