Asteroids
Ceres moving toward M100, Mar. 24, 2023
This is dwarf planet Ceres moving towards a conjunction with the large spiral galaxy M100
in Coma Berenices. There are many other fainter galaxies in the photo.
In this animated gif, Ceres (7th magnitude) is near the left center moving back and forth.
I took a set of 30 x 90 second exposures of this area to make the background image,
but due to its motion over 45 minutes, Ceres was elongated.
In Photoshop, I overlaid the first and last single exposures over the Ceres streak
of the composite and made the animated GIF.
This photo was supposed to happen on the evening of Mar. 26, 2023 when Ceres was directly over M100,
but clouds prevented that photo.
Instead I had to take the photo two days early.
I had planned to use my Celestron EdgeHD 800 and color camera,
but I already had my Genesis out with the ASI1600mm mono camera attached working on another project.
Click on the image for a larger view in a new window.
Details:
Location: Front yard Cary, NC
Camera: ASI1600mm-Pro
Exposure: 30 x 90s gain 139
Filter: UV/IR
Scope: Televue Genesis 4" f/5 refractor
Mount: iOptron GEM-45
Guider: Orion 60mm finder/guider
Capture software: ZWO ASIair Plus
Guiding software: ZWO ASIair Plus
Calibration frames: darks, flats, flat-dark
Processing software: Pixinsight, Photoshop CC, GradientXTerminator
Weather conditions: Warm with some high clouds
Notes: The photo displayed is a crop of the original frame.
The first photo was started at 11:32 pm and the last exposure started at 00:20 am.
Simple processing in PixInsight: calibration, stack, DBE, SPCC, noise reduction.
In Photoshop: sharpen, resize, convert to JPG.
Back to Mark's Astrophotography Home
Near Earth Asteroid (7482) 1994 PC1 - Jan. 18, 2022
Fast moving near Earth asteroid (7482) 1994 PC1 from 8:13 pm to 8:40 pm Tuesday evening moving through Pisces.
At it closest point to our planet,
the 460 foot asteroid was 1.9 million miles from Earth and appeared to
be around magnitude 10.4.
It was moving just over two degrees per hour making it difficult to find and frame on my camera.
Even 10 second exposures showed streaking.
For a larger view in a new window, click on the image.
Details:
Location: Front yard Cary, NC
Camera: ZWO ASI1600mm-Pro
Exposure: 70 x 10 sec subs at gain 139 with a 10 second gap between frames
Filter: none
Scope: TeleVue Genesis 4" f/5
Mount: iOptron GEM-45
Guider: none
Capture software: APT
Guiding software: none
Calibration frames: 13 flats and 13 darks
Processing software: PixInsight and Photoshop, GIF Animator
Notes:
The image was cropped from the lower 2/3 of the full FOV of my camera.
Back to Mark's Astrophotography Home
NEO 1998 OR2 Apr. 18, 2020
Near Earth Asteroid 1998 OR2 10 days from closest approach to Earth.
About 50 minutes of real time starting at 9:56 pm was compressed into about 4 seconds
of video in this animation.
1998 OR2 will be closest to Earth on the morning of April 29 at a distance of 4 million miles.
It will be much brihter and moving more quickly through our sky.
Tonight, it was pretty near M44 (The Beehive cluster) in Cancer.
The brightest star near the bottom center of the photo is magnitude 8.3 so I am guessing that
the asteroid is around 11th or 12th magnitude.
North is up in the animation.
The photo is a stack of 42 x 15 second frames taken with the ASI1600mm mono camera
attached to my TeleVue Genesis 4" f/5 refractor.
It is a crop of a pretty small area of the ASI1600's camera chip.
I was using my new iOptron GEM-45 mount unguided to track the stars.
The photos were taken in my front yard in Cary NC.
The frames were captured with Astrophotography Tool then processed in PixInsight.
Photoshop CC was used for final touch-ups.
GIF animator was used to create the animated GIF.
Back to the top of the page
Back to Mark's Astrophotography Home
3200 Phaethon - Dec. 11, 2017
3200 Phaethon is the "rock comet/asteroid" whose debris is responsible for the annual Geminid meteor shower in December.
Shown here is an animation of Phaethon moving through the stars of eastern Perseus,
about 7 degrees from the bright star Capella.
The images were captured on Monday night December 11, 2017 from 8:56 pm to 10:39 pm.
The object was moving rapidly westward at a rate of 15 arc-minutes of sky per minute of time.
The field of view shown is about 43 arc-minutes corner to corner,
so the full moon would just about fit into the frame.
The brightest star in the field (upper left corner) is magnitude 8.6,
Phaethon was at magnitude 11.1.
The occasional white specks seen are cosmic ray strikes on the CCD detector.
101 images of Phaethon were taken.
Each exposure was 8 seconds long followed by a pause of 52 seconds.
So, 101 minutes of real time is compressed into just over 10 seconds in the animation.
I used my SBIG ST-402 CCD camera connected to my Televue Genesis f/5 refractor to capture the images.
The telescope was mounted onto my Losmandy G-11 mount.
I guided the sequence with my Orion finder/guider and ATIK 16IC camera to keep the field of view from drifting over the long period of time.
The images were captured, reduced, stretched, and cropped with MaximDL.
I used ImagesPlus to normalize the brightness and contrast of the images,
and then converted the FITS files to JPG.
Gif Animator was used to make the animation.
17 each of darks, bias, flats, and flat darks were used in the image reduction.
The images were captured in my front yard amid all the street lights and Christmas lights brightening the sky!
Back to the top of the page
Back to Mark's Astrophotography Home
NEO 3122 Florence - Sept. 3, 2017
This is an animation of near Earth asteroid 3122 Florence moving through the constellation of Vulpecula.
Florence has been in the news recently since it is the largest asteroid (2.7 mi. diameter)
to pass this close to Earth in about a hundred years.
Two moonlets were discovered orbiting Florence by radar on Sept. 2, 2017.
This a sequence of 184 x 5 second exposures followed by a gap of 15 seconds between each shot.
The images were taken over the period of an hour starting at 11:13 pm.
In this view, north is up and west is to the right.
The field shown covers just about the diameter of the full moon.
The brightest stars are just under 9th magnitude and the asteroid is about magnitude 9.5.
Time is compressed such that one hour of real time lasts 18 seconds in the animation.
The moon was near full making imaging more difficult.
The occasional bright specks seen are cosmic ray strikes on the CCD sensor.
The images for the animation were captured through my 4" f/5 Teleue Genesis refractor on my
Losmandy G-11 mount at home in Cary, NC.
I was using my SBIG ST-402ME CCD camera.
Images were acquired, reduced, aligned, and converted to jpg using Maxim DL 5.
The animation was created with GIF Animator.
Back to Mark's Astrophotography Home
16 Psyche and 29 Amphitrite in motion - April 1, 2017
This animation shows the conjunction of main belt minor planets 16 Psyche on the left,
and 29 Amphitrite on the right, moving through southern Leo.
This animation compresses two hours of real time starting at midnight on April 1,
into about 3 seconds to show the movement of the asteroids.
The animation consists of 27 different 10 second exposures separated by 5 minutes.
Psyche was magnitude 10.9 at the time and moved 41 arc-seconds.
Amphitrite was magnitude 9.8 and moved 44 arc-seconds.
This view is about 40 arc-minutes wide with north at the top.
The brief white blips occasionally seen are cosmic ray strikes.
The seeing was fairly bad over the duration of the photography session.
I used my Televue Genesis 4" f/5 refractor on the Celestron AVX mount and my SBIG ST-402 CCD camera.
The images were captured in my driveway in Cary, NC and were unguided.
Capture, image reduction, align, and crop were all done in Maxim DL.
Images were normalized in ImagesPlus, then taken back to Maxim for batch convert to jpg.
Then I created a photoshop action to put a slight contrast curve on each image
to suppress the terrible noise.
Finally I used a Photoshop script to convert a file of images to layers before creating the animation.
Back to Mark's Astrophotography Home
NEO 2004 BL86 - Jan. 28, 2015
Animation of near Earth asteroid 2004 BL86.
I was disappointed with the rainy weather Monday night January 26, 2015.
I was prepared to photograph the NEO 2004 BL86 when it was near it's brightest and moving right by M44 the Beehive cluster.
I did some more checking, and the asteroid would still be relatively bright and still moving pretty fast on Tuesday night so I decided to give it a try.
You might recall that 2004 BL86 has been in the news recently and has a small moon orbiting it.
Weather conditions were challenging Tuesday night.
I went ahead and set up my Televue Genesis on it's G-11 mount with my SBIG ST-402 CCD camera attached in my driveway anyway,
not wanting to miss out a second night in a row.
Temperatures were in the low 30s to upper 20s with gusty winds giving me quite a chill.
To make matters worse, a batch of clouds moved through between 11:30 and 12:30 while I was capturing my images,
so I had to restart everything around 12:30.
In the animation, north is up with west to the right side.
The brightest star in the upper center is a star of magnitude 8.19 in Ursa Major.
The asteroid was shining at magnitude 11.3.
During the animation, you will see a satellite cross the field as well as cosmic ray strikes that create bright spots.
Thirty minutes of real time is compressed into about 10 seconds.
One hundred individual images of 6 seconds with a 10 second pause were used to create the final animation.
The view presented is shown full size but cropped to reduce the size of the video.
All images were acquired with Maxim DL then reduced by applying flats, darks, and bias frames.
After aligning all the frames, they were converted to jpg and taken to Photoshop CS2 to create the animation.
Back to Mark's Astrophotography Home
Eros
Asteroid 433 Eros. This six frame animation was taken the morning of Feb. 3, 2012 from my home in Cary. I was participating in the Eros Parallax Project so I had the images to make this. Each of the six frames is 15 seconds long unguided through my 4" f/5 Televue Genesis refractor and my SBIG ST-402 CCD camera. The images were taken between 2:24am and 2:36am. At the time Eros was in the constellation Sextans. North is to the right in this image. The asteroid is about 8.5 magnitude and the faintest stars are around 15th magnitude. Eros is now at opposition and still moving very fast since it is currently inside the orbit of Mars.
Back to the top of the pageBack to Mark's Astrophotography Home
1998 QE2
NEO 1998 QE2 - I made the following animation from images I took from my driveway in Cary, NC. I was using my Genesis 4” refractor and my SBIG ST-402ME CCD camera. The animation is composed of 136 frames of 8 second exposures separated by 4 seconds. The sequence was started at 11:32 pm on May 31, 2013 and finished at 12:05 am. At the time, the asteroid was in Libra at RA 14:54 and Dec -19:17. NASA predicted the magnitude at around 11.25. In the animation, North is to the left side. The asteroid was moving to the northeast. It was quite breezy during the photography with temperatures in the mid 70s.
Back to the top of the pageBack to Mark's Astrophotography Home
2005 YU55
Near Earth Asteroid 2005 YU55 and a mystery object. If you look closely at this animation, you will see two moving objects. The object in the upper center is the mystery object, which may be a tumbling rocket booster, and in the bottom left corner is near earth asteroid 2005 YU55. This sequence was taken about 1:37 UT on Nov. 9, 2011. The bright star in the field is SAO 107262 in Pegasus. For about two weeks, I thought the brighter object was the asteroid until talking with some other imagers who also got fooled. This was taken with my 4" Genesis refractor and my SBIG ST-402 camera unguided. The animation is a 9 frame sequence of 3 seconds and a one second gap between frames. North is to the right and west is at the bottom of the frame.
Back to the top of the pageBack to Mark's Astrophotography Home
2008 EV5
Near Earth asteroid 2008 EV5 animation taken Dec. 25, 2008. Over 100 images were made into this animated gif. The asteroid was moving north through Cancer. The images were taken from 11:10pm through 11:47pm. Each exposure was 15 seconds long. The field was cropped to reduce the size of the animation. The asteroid was approximately 13th magnitude. This was taken with my 4" Genesis refractor and my SBIG ST-402 camera.
Back to the top of the pageBack to Mark's Astrophotography Home
Ceres and Vesta move in tandem through Virgo - March and April 2014
In this animated gif, you can see Ceres (upper left) and Vesta (lower right) moving together through
the stars of Virgo in late March and early April 2014.
Ceres was approximately magnitude 7.2 while Vesta was shining at magnitude 6.0.
The bright double star near the center is Tau Virginis at magnitude 4.3.
Watching the animation, you can sort of get a feel which way the ecliptic is oriented.
The images were taken over three nights - March 27, April 2, and April 3.
The shots were taken from my light polluted front driveway in Cary around 1am.
The original idea was to do this on three successive nights,
but we cannot get more than two clear nights in a row this time of year.
March 27 was by far the best night with really clear skies. Each successive night, the transparency got worse.
I used my Canon XTi with a Nikon 135mm lens attached.
The camera was mounted piggyback atop my Genesis refractor on my Losmandy G11 mount.
For each night, I combined seven 30 second photos together and then tried to
equalize each nights shots with each other for the animation.
I acquired the images with BackyardEOS, processed them with ImagesPlus, and produced the animation with Photoshop.
Back to Mark's Astrophotography Home