Hello,
Here is an image of Minor Planet 136108 Haumea taken on Friday 11th June. I managed to just squeeze off 2 x 5 minute frames just before it went behind the neighbour’s tree line, into the light dome of Brisbane
From:
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/...y=OverviewLong
"
Haumea (formerly known as 2003 EL61) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt. Its mass is one-third the mass of Pluto. It was discovered in 2004 by a team headed by Mike Brown of Caltech at the Palomar Observatory in the United States and, in 2005, by a team headed by J. L. Ortiz at the Sierra Nevada Observatory in Spain, though the latter claim has been contested.
Haumea sits among the trans-Neptunian objects, a vast ring of distant cold and rocky bodies in the outer Solar System. At this moment it is roughly 50 times the Sun-Earth distance from the Sun, but at its closest the elliptical orbit of Haumea brings it 35 times the Sun-Earth distance from our star.
Haumea satisfies the requirements for membership in the club of dwarf planets, so it is now the fifth dwarf planet in the solar system, joining Pluto, Ceres, Eris, and Makemake. On September 17, 2008, it was accepted as a dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and named after Haumea, the Hawaiian goddess of childbirth. Haumea's extreme elongation makes it the fastest spinning object in the Solar System, and unique among known trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs)".
It was a challenging session. After a few months away from any serious stuff, I ventured out to give the software and system a bit of a shake down. My, what software changes have occurred since 2009!
I tried to update my copies of The Sky 6 Professional (planetarium program) and CCDSoft (camera control program) and had all sorts of problems. It seems that the software providers, Software Bisque, have changed their policies and I had to re-register my applications before I could download the updates.
Also, my version of ASCOM and the driver for my Tak mount needed updating along with a plethora of Microsoft Updates as I hadn’t used the notebook computer since late 2009. Anyhow, some 2 hours later, everything was up and running once more. Phew!
I've also attached a screen print from The Sky after performing an Image Link with CCDSoft, which identifies Haumea.
Cheers
Dennis
![[1ponders]'s Avatar](../vbiis/customavatars/avatar45_9.gif){kind=avatar}
