Asteroid Animation

Folks, for your amusement...

Asteroid 97, Klotho is a fairly large main belt asteroid. It has a brightly colored surface. It is probably a fragment from the core of a shattered large planetesimal, since it is composed of pure nickel-iron metals.

It has a period of 4 years, 132 days and is about 61¾ miles (83Km) in diameter.

Klotho was found by the prolific comet discoverer Ernst Tempel on February 17, 1868. It was his fifth and final asteroid discovery. It is named after one of the three Moirae, or Fates, in Greek mythology. Klotho carried a spindle and a globe and spun the thread of life.

Image details:

Object - Klotho (Asteroid 97)
Date/time - 22/08/05 23:23 UTC to 23/08/05 00:51 UTC
Exposure - 60 sec with 3 min time lapse between each one
Image no. - 30
Imager - DSI
Mount - AP1200
Scope - C8 SCT with 6.3 focal reducer

That's pretty cool

Some impressive work there Dave, nice catch!
Seanie.

Nice image!

Cool to see the asteroid move like that, gives you some idea how hard these tings are to spot!

Very nice work Dave! What software do you use to create the animation?

Thanks folks. The 30 images were taken over about 90 minutes. Each frame was matched as best I could. Unfortunately some high clouds rolled in about half way through - hence the minor 'glitch' in the middle.

Each frames was placed in Photpshop as a layer. Then Adobe ImageReady was used to create the animated gif.

Klotho is actually about 11 or 12 mag so its pretty easy to image. Its about 2 AU away at the moment but still quite bright. Hence the high cloud still didn't prevent some OK images being shot.

Cheers

Dave