Pluto on the move...

That is fantastic Dave. Really terrific.

Just a curiosity, the second image looks much grainier than the first, any idea why, exposure lenghts, sky conditions? Just curious because I wanna give this a go soon.

Hi Bart

Pluto moved about 1.5 arcminutes in approx 24 hrs (the time between images). The image is about 8 arcmins wide.

The moon is about 30 arcminutes diameter - so it would take Pluto about 20 days to cover the distance of the diameter of a full moon...

Cheers

Dave McD

Cheers Dave!

So basically, what I should take from this is that Pluto is small and dim and moves rather slowley across the sky!

BB

Dave,

Good shot of Pluto. Apparently there was an occultation last night of Charon around the time you were shooting. The star would have been 16 mag. The path was below Ireland, however, the star would have been secs of arc nearby to Pluto. Just wondering if your first frame shows that star. There appears to be a faint object nearby, but I think it's too far from the predicted positon. Of course it depends on what your magnitude threshold and resolution.. Do you have some idea?

Eamonn A

Thanks for the feedback folks. I was surprised myself at how well this mini project turned out - and I learned how to make an animation into the bargain

I suppose if conditions are right tonight I could try for a third. I could also try and shoot another subset of images, say each hour, and show a maller motion over a smaller period. But it looks like our good spell is over...

The second image was shot through a fairly hazy looking sky. There seemed to be a good bit of high cloud around last night so you can see the difference in the quality. Exposure durations were the same, the first image was a composite of 22 stacked frames, the second a composite of 15 frames (the mist really began to form after that).

I loaded in some Aladin images for the first frame and though they are processed out of the animation, I reckon the faintest magnitude was around 16 or possibly a little fainter. The problem is that once you get below 16, magnitudes are listed as red, blue, UV or something else - not visual. The second image might show as faint as 16 but it would barely discernable above the noise. Certainly the first image showed an object very close to pluto.

Charon is mag 16.8 - I suppose its possible that I captured it with the first image - I'll try some reprocessing and see if its there and then see if the occultation is recorded.

Thanks again folks - glad you liked it!

Dave McD

For some reason I can never see these animated gifs, I only see the first frame

Dave, keep that up and you will give Walt Disney a run for his money :lol:
Bill.