I (just) managed to grab a few images showing the track of the James Webb Space telescope at the second Lagrange point (L2). I used The Sky X Pro to plot 3 positions of the JWST, based on a downloaded table of positions obtained from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Horizons System at:
https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons/app.html#/
The James Webb Space Telescope will not be in orbit around the Earth, like the Hubble Space Telescope is - it will actually orbit the Sun, 1.5 million kilometres (1 million miles) away from the Earth at what is called the second Lagrange point or L2. What is special about this orbit is that it lets the telescope stay in line with the Earth as it moves around the Sun. This allows the satellite's large sunshield to protect the telescope from the light and heat of the Sun and Earth (and Moon).
I grabbed a series of images (with some cloud interruptions) on Wed 9th Feb 2022, between 9:04pm and 9:42pm AEST. (2022-02-09T11:04 to 11:42 UT).
I used a Celestron C9.25 Edge HD with the Celestron x0.7 Reducer (1645mm fl) and the QHY268M camera. Each frame was exposed for 120 secs.
After processing the image set, I saw a trail that looked too good to be true and sure enough, it was. The obvious trail belonged to an Asteroid, Number 15520, aka 1999 XK98 which The Sky X plotted for me to confirm the ID.
Oh well, back to the drawing board. I loaded the individual calibrated and aligned frames into PixInsight and used the Blink Process and sure enough, I could just make out a small clump of pixels marching across the screen in the predicted positions of the JWST as the frames advanced. Each clump was barely above the background level but became obvious when blinked.
I loaded the frames into PS CC and used Layer Masks to combine the trail of the LWST and also raise the brightness level of the trail, above the background, to make it more conspicuous.
Image details (cropped from full frame):- Center (RA, hms): 07h 28m 41.669s
- Center (Dec, dms): +10° 30' 09.775"
- Size: 9.84 x 7.38 arcmin
- Pixel scale: 0.461 arcsec/pixel
- Orientation: Up is 360 degrees E of N
- 2022-02-09T11:04 to 11:42 UT. (9:04pm to 9:42pm AEST)
- Each frame exposed for 120 seconds.
Asteroid details:- Object Name: 15520 1999 XK98
- Object Type: Asteroid
- Magnitude: 16.85
- Earth Distance (au): 1.79
- Sun Distance (au): 2.69
- Constellation: Canis Minor
Bands of clouds rolled in during the session so there are a few gaps in the trail.
Cheers
Dennis
