Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Gemini (Gem)
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Vesta (brightest asteroid) while between Castor/Pollux and Procyon, steven_usa
Vesta (brightest asteroid) while between Castor/Pollux and Procyon
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Vesta (brightest asteroid) while between Castor/Pollux and Procyon

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Vesta (brightest asteroid) while between Castor/Pollux and Procyon, steven_usa
Vesta (brightest asteroid) while between Castor/Pollux and Procyon
Powered byPixInsight

Vesta (brightest asteroid) while between Castor/Pollux and Procyon

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Description

This is the asteroid called Vesta (~mag 6) in the evening of Februrary 10th 2017 (~8:10pm CST), captured in 22 exposures of 300 seconds each, from North Texas.

Center coordinates at time of sequence start (J2000): 7h38m3.5s/+25deg 22'25.9"

Camera was ASI1600MC-C using 75 gain/10 offset guided on CGEM-DX. PixInsight Blink did most of the processing work, then this was converted from XISF, to PNG, then the animated GIF. An AVI version is forth coming with annotations.

Again, each frame (movement of the asteroid) represents 5 minutes of time -- but the GIF is sped up, to about 200-700ms between the frames (I went thru a few variations of the GIF generation). Or in other words, this short sequence represents 110 minutes of time (22x5 min), sped up to ~5 seconds (or ~1320X faster than real time).

Vesta won't return to this region until ~July 21, 2020 (it has a Sun orbit of ~1325 days), but the corresponding movement of the Earth around the sun will mean we won't be able to reproduce this shot.

NOTE: Pixel scale = 0.429 arcsec/pixel

B revision): WorldWideTelescope model of the sky region during the time of this shot (with DDS Survey).

YOU TUBE annotated version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UpMkhsWbpM

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Revisions

  • Final
    Vesta (brightest asteroid) while between Castor/Pollux and Procyon, steven_usa
    Original
  • Vesta (brightest asteroid) while between Castor/Pollux and Procyon, steven_usa
    B

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Vesta (brightest asteroid) while between Castor/Pollux and Procyon, steven_usa