Pluto in Sagittarius – Brisbane 3rd August

[ChrisM]

Originally Posted by Dennis

Hi Chris

The faintest stars are between mag 18 and 19 and are from the “TheSkyX Pro Database Add On”.

Cheers

Dennis

Thanks Dennis - no wonder the field looked so crowded.
Chris

[LewisM]

Great stuff!

I too had the same issues 2 noights ago - trying to remember my setup flow, how to do everything, and even spotting the alignment stars by memory. It all came back...

When I flicked on the hand controller, the date in it was 1 month and 3 days ago. And prior to that one, it had been almost 3 months!

And then after imaging my target for 2.5 hours, I noticed the frames were oh so slightly out of focus. So, I threw them out. Ah well, now the wind seems gone, there is tonight

I tried Pluto once - I can say I have seen it visually, and I did try imaging it, but the image scale was too small through the ED80 I used back then. I'll try it in the FL102S.

[naskies (Dave)]

Nice work, Dennis.

[Dennis]

Originally Posted by LewisM

>snip
I tried Pluto once - I can say I have seen it visually, and I did try imaging it, but the image scale was too small through the ED80 I used back then. I'll try it in the FL102S.

Hi Lewis,

You should not have any problems with imaging Pluto with your (gorgeous) Vixen FL102S refractor.

This image of Pluto the original “Planet” was taken on 22nd August 2006, just a day or so before the IAU demoted the planet on 24th August, to become a “Dwarf Planet”.

It was taken with a Vixen ED102S F9 refractor and SBIG ST7E (older parallel model) CCD camera. The image is made up of 5x300 sec exposures.

Cheers

Dennis

[Jon (Jonathan)]

It moves fast alright, compared with what you might think. I got it on two successive nights in May. From memory the FoV of these images are c. 10'

[astroron (Ron)]

Originally Posted by Jon

It moves fast alright, compared with what you might think. I got it on two successive nights in May. From memory the FoV of these images are c. 10'

That sure quick movement.
I have seen Pluto visually a few times in the past,should give it a go one more time before it gets too faint even for the 16".
Cheers

[Lee]

More movement than I thought - I tracked it over two nights last weekend.... here's a gif showing movement in 48hr, in fact the second frame is at about the same time as Dennis' image....