Here is an image made up of 23 frames, exposure 30 secs each, showing the trail of 2005 YU55 as it scooted across the Brisbane skies this evening, under the glare of an almost full Moon. This fascinating object was much brighter than I expected and I was so pleased that the nearby Moon did not really affect the outcome.
If I can remember how to generate an animation, you might just get one, albeit sometime tomorrow!
Cheers
Dennis
Last edited by Dennis; 10-11-2011 at 08:48 PM.
Reason: Animation added
Thank you Malcolm, Rolf and Lester. After a good nights sleep I managed to process another image set grabbed earlier in the evening.
From the vantage point of Brisbane, Near-Earth asteroid 2005 YU55 passed within 0.85 lunar distances from the Earth on November 9, 2011. This Near Earth Asteroid was discovered on December 28, 2005 and results from the Arecibo radar show it to be a very dark, nearly spherical object some 400 meters in diameter. The wavy profile of the track is more the result of the gusty winds hitting the imaging rig rather than the body itself tumbling!
I managed to record the passage of this relatively large object as it glided across the moonlit skies of Brisbane on 9th Nov 2011, capturing 42 x 10 sec images between 7:41pm and 7:54pm AEST (UT+10h). My wife was comforted by the fact that I was keeping watch outside, recording 2005 YU55’s silent passage, whilst she slept safely indoors.
A top effort Dennis, look forward to the animation.
I was watching the live webcast from Keck II control room right up to when the first Keck II image came up, that coincided with the arrival of a severe thunderstorm out here at Broken Hill so I turned off all of my gear and pulled the plugs. It was interesting that from the pixel size of the asteroid on the Keck II image, it appears that the asteroid is only about half the size that was originally predicted.
Here is an animation of the close passage of Near-Earth Asteroid 2005 YU55 as recorded from Brisbane on 9th Nov 2011, between 7:41pm and 7:54pm AEST (UT+10).
To minimize the size of the animated gif, I generated a master background image of the stars without the trail of 2005 YU55 and then blended the trail in, frame by frame. Had I not done this, the file size was blowing out to 1.6Mb due to the frame-to-frame background variations that the animated gif was trying to represent.
Although it now looks a little too clean and synthetic, the animation does convey the dynamics and energy of this close encounter. It was quite sobering to be able to view the almost full Moon some 20 degrees away, knowing that this lump of rock was now nearer to me than our Moon, passing within 0.85 lunar distances at its closest point.
I was astonished at how bright the NEO appeared, having read that results from the Arecibo radar indicated it to be a very dark, nearly spherical object some 400 meters in diameter.
the animation does convey the dynamics and energy of this close encounter. It was quite sobering to be able to view the almost full Moon some 20 degrees away, knowing that this lump of rock was now nearer to me than our Moon, passing within 0.85 lunar distances at its closest point.
I was thinking a very similar thing when watching this. On a cosmic scale (or even just inner solar system) this was very close and it's big and moving fast. Almost like watching doom pass you by!
As they say, make everyday count and we are indeed very fortunate in what life has given us so far.
BTW, that's a quite cool animation. Well done for showing the dynamics.
Thank you Chris, Mario, Chris, Ric, David, Darrin and Gary for your nice comments…but wait…there is more!
Here is an animated gif of the 72x5 sec image set I captured between 9:05pm and 9:21pm. Something zipped through the set leaving a trail on a couple of the frames. It may have been an aeroplane as the exposures were 5 secs with a download time (gap) of around 10-12 secs.
To plan for this event I used Starry Night Pro Plus 6, The Sky X Pro and SkyTools Pro V3 although I was left scratching my head as their predictions varied by some 45 minutes although their orbital paths were almost identical. When I downloaded the orbital elements from the NASA (JPL) website, I found that SkyTools would place the NEO on the chip which it did with aplomb. It seems that a zero mass Earth may have been used in some of the calculations and in the case of an NEO like 2005 YU55, the Earth pulls on the object as it approaches, making it appear “ahead” of the predicted time.
Using SkyTools I leap frogged ahead of 2005 YU55 then set up and started the imaging sequence, each time to be astonished and so pleasantly surprised that the object appeared right on cue and in the correct location. We amateur astronomers are surely blessed to have such highly functional and powerful software/hardware capabilities at our disposal.
