Announcement - J65

hang on, I had a bit of a brain freeze, are you taking multiple pics and comparing asteroid position relative to back ground stars, if so I can see how such precision is possible. We'll have a detailed chat in turkey on this me thinks.
I'm reading these posts too quickly..

Dave - plate solving is the key - that's where the accuracy comes in. I guess its essentially image that's the key. If you have bloated blurred stars, a plate solve is usually impossible. Nice tight roundy stars and you're onto a winner.

For the MPC report, you choose two or three objects (or more) numbered above 400. Image them over two nights (any two nights). For each object, take 2 or 3 shots total, an hour apart (on the same night). You choose the exposure time based on the object mag. I chose objects mag 17 and below.

I chose 8 objects really close to each other - within a couple of degrees so when I slewed, the next object was usually in the FOV and the mount wasn't 'lost'.

With blurred images, clouds rolling in etc, I had to ditch 4 of the objects but I still had 4 to submit which was more than enough. There's just one image for each of the line items in the list I attached - so for the obs code, I submitted data from 18 images. The more the merrier but I guess you could effectively get away with 8 images (two objects, two images each per night for 2 nights).

Of course, to get 18 good images and clear nights, I guess I probably took a total of 200 images. But they were mostly 60 second exposure. The odd one was 120 sec, mostly on nights with high cloud.

I'll give you the inside track in Turkey

Suffice to say, I reckon there's a least 3 or 4 folks here that could quite easily manage this...

Dave

Keith - is astrometry used for double stars that are orbiting each other? ie so you can determine what the orbit is and if mutual occultations are imminent? That must have to be pretty accurate, especially if the objects are really bright - star bloating etc.

Trojan - um. Apollo perhaps? or Amor?

Cheers and thanks!
Dave

Seanie, with your dome and new scope, how's about Tullamore giving astrometry a lash?

Using you as an example Dave, I don't see why not. The problem, as always, is the pace of things in the club coupled with the money, but its definitely worth a shot (in the dark!)

Seanie.

Keith - is astrometry used for double stars that are orbiting each other? ie so you can determine what the orbit is and if mutual occultations are imminent? That must have to be pretty accurate, especially if the objects are really bright - star bloating etc.

There is some work done on this Dave, but mainly it's when a new variable / nova erupts, this is done to determine it's precise position, especially in crowded fields. These coordinates arethen used to trace back information/photos of the proginator star, and study the nova in detail...

Keith..