Damian Peach images Asteroid Vesta!

[iceman (Mike)]

Amazing images of the asteroid Vesta, by Damian Peach while he was in the Barbados.

With the favourable opposition of Vesta on June 1st this year, close to its minimum possible distance from the Earth (106 million miles) i took a series of images as well as observing visually. Observations were made from Barbados under excellent seeing conditions.

I also took a ganymede image and a nearby star all at the same focal length/filter configuration for comparsion. Vesta is definatly revealed as "not round" in shape and certainly not stellar in appearance. I could easily see this visually as well at high power. Ganymede for comparsion is 1.68" arc in apparent diameter.

http://www.damianpeach.com/barbados0...1_vesta_dp.jpg

Thanks to Chris Go for the heads up on this!

[Ric]

They are very impressive images for sure Mike. You can quite clearly make out the shape of the asteroid as well.

[netwolf]

Awesome as always, he really is pushing the benchmark.
And his DVD is out now so I just placed my order.

[rogerg (Roger)]

Gez, is there any limit...

[alan meehan (Alan)]

unbelievable....very impressive camera work

[avandonk]

Beautiful experiment with controls to show the result is not artefact.

Bert