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Transit of Venus |
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NEO 2007 TU24 flyby(Images taken by others) images taken by Elizabeth Warner, Univ. of Maryland On Monday, 28 January, I went to the observatory and got the C14 and my 6" refractor setup with the cameras and computers. I had ephemerides from JPL and MPC and started taking series of pics. I first used the JPL coordinates that I had, but nothing showed up in the images. For the third set of pics that I took with my telescope, I used MPC coordinates. Unfortunately, I was running back and forth between the two scopes, so I didn't watch the images as they were downloaded. However, at the end of the set, when I reviewed it, a streak showed up in the first frame. I then moved the telescope to the next time hack and took a single frame. Bingo! Moved it again and took pics until I got another streak. With my scope, I got four images. In the C14, with the smaller field of view, we have a streak in one of the frames, but I didn't process that one. All images were taken with an AP 152mm f/9 telescope with an SBIG ST-7 using the clear (L) filter from their tricolor filter set. North is at right and East is at top. Unfortunately, I got frustrated near the end of the session because I 'lost' the asteroid and couldn't get it back in the field and then clouds rolled in. I basically forgot to take the flats. I'm not sure what the blotch is, as I didn't notice any obvious defects on the telescope lens or the filter.
 Graphic from SNP+ showing the area. Grey boxes are the four images embedded. The red line is the path of TU24 through the sky based on MPC elset from later Monday evening. The time hacks on the red line are where the asteroid supposedly was at those times. I certainly won't deny that there mught be some user error in getting the orbital elements from the MPC and entering them in SNP+, but there still seems to be a pretty good discrepancy between the supposed position and when I took the frames. The lowest grey box is the first frame at about 7:45pm. The top box is the last frame at about 8:45pm. Images from othersI do not know all of the details (equipment, orientation, exposures...) for these images...  Gary Emerson: During the past couple of days, a minor planet that is classed as a Near Earth Object (NEO), passed close to the Earth (and missed). This NEO is about 900 feet long and came within 1.4 times the distance of the moon.
  A set of images was taken by Patrick Wiggins who posted the information (msg below) to the Minor Planet Mailing List (MPML). Others on the list then posted animations using Patrick's set of images... Top image is from Patrick. The animation was generated by Michael Richmond. Patrick: I managed to get 3 series of 2007 TU24 while it was visible through haze in a sucker hole. Despite the haze I was lucky to get what I did as it was snowing earlier tonight and the sucker hole has since closed and snow is predicted to resume later this morning. Images in this series were taken between 2007 JAN 29 06:49:15 and 06:52:35 UT. 25 two second exposures through C-14 @ f/11, ST-10, binned 3x3, -25°, aligned and stacked. FOV is 13' x 9'. Michael: You can find several files created from Patrick's images at http://spiff.rit.edu/richmond/temp/ I registered all the images, then combined them in several ways. A sum of all the images (shows asteroid moving through field) tu24_sum.fit tu24_sum.gif A median of all the images (no asteroid, just stars) tu24_median.fit tu24_median.gif Animations showing the asteroid moving through the field tu24_anim.gif tu24_anim.mpg Looks great! Thanks to Patrick for sharing his images. Michael Richmond Animations from Adam Stuart (Miami, Florida USA)
Images and animations from Gerhard Dangl
Images sent to Spaceweather.com Last Updated: Thursday January 31, 2008 by Elizabeth Warner |
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