Juno

 The dark is a lonely place.

Since the formation of the solar system some 4 billion years ago, millions upon millions of rocks or asteroids are caught in an endless dance in orbit between Mars & Jupiter. 99.9% are no bigger than a London bus but some just some are a little larger.

Travelling at 18km per second I managed to capture movement of approx 32,000km during 30 minutes worth of exposure last night of the 320km asteroid 3 Juno. You can see from the cropped image the elongated shape due to the movement over that time. I have created a little repeating animation of the 15 frames to show the movement.

Juno was the 3rd asteroid discovered in 1804 and believed to be about the 10th largest in size.

https://theskylive.com/3dsolarsystem

Comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy animation

They say an image speaks a thousand words.

So for me an animation speakes a whole volume.

This will be the 3rd animation I have done that shows the movement

of a comet. This one is of course Comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy.

 

 

26 Frames of 2 minute exposures. Animation created in Maxim DL after a DDP stretch, & Crop in Imagesplus.

 

I hope we get a few more clear nights to have another go. Rapidly moving North also it has  moved over 10 degrees in 3 days since imaging on Saturday night.

Comet 168P/ Hergenrother

 

Great news for keen comet observers, a well known periodic comet has suddenly gone into a substantial outburst and is now visible through backyard telescopes. 168P/ Hergenrother is a short period comet which visits the inner solar every 6.9 years. Normally the comet glows at a sorry magnitude 15 however something happened - perhaps a new dust jet - which caused the comet to brighten considerably, recent visual estimates place the comet between magnitude 10.2 and 10.5 putting the icy visitor within range of 6" aperture telescopes. Here is an animation I made from 60 x 1 minute exposures. Visible in the top corner of Pegasus at present and moving it's way through to Andromeda.

This is my Animation of 60 x 1 minute frames.

 

 

60 X 1 minute frames stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and a little DDP

Lulin Animation

Lulin Animation

Wow it worked I downloaded a simple AVI creation programme added the files and hey presto Comet Lulin zipping across our skies.
This small animation is from stacking 10 frames and repeated