A combination of Brisbane’s light glow and stitching artefacts have combined to
give this 360 panorama of the garden/house/observatory a rather eclipse like
quality.
I love the diamond ring over the observatory dome, prominences
caused by house and street lights and even the coronal mass visible to the
south!
The image is made up of 20 photos taken at 3am this morning and stitched together using an effect called ‘Little planet’ which gives an amazing, if bizarre, result.
Well, after weeks of cloud, I get a break just when I needed it! NEO 2013 NJ has been on my hit list for a while and its a deep southern object, not unlike 2012 DA14 for that matter, and a reasonable mag 14. These Earth skimming rocks are quite fast moving and at 2.5 Lunar distances this one is going at nearly an arc min every min – which means it can be seen clearly moving in real time.
Here’s the Youtube: It’s been getting a fair pounding thanks to a plug on Universe today and a retweet by the MPC
After a number of abortive attempts to get my observatory recognised officially by the Minor Planet Centre, the recent long spell of clear weather allowed me to make enough observations of several asteroids over a sufficient period of time to demonstrate an acceptable level of accuracy and Samford Valley Observatory now bears the code Q79. Hurrah.
This code will mean that I can send my observations directly to them rather than through third parties, and even better, can generate lists of expected positions of asteroids (more properly known as ephemerides) without having to enter my location each time, just the code.
Previous attempts to get a code had been scuppered by weather, weather and weather…
The Australia Telescope Compact Array, near Narrabri hosted an open day to celebrate its 25th birthday today. I made the most of this is a rare opportunity to go behind the scenes of one of the most powerful radio telescopes on the planet, and hung around later to take some nightscapes
This was taken as the telescope was looking at the centre of the galaxy – it seemed to be sucking it in!
Headed off for an open day at the Paul Wild radio telescope near Narrabri in NSW and stopped over in Goondiwindi for the night. I captured this nightscape of a very photogenic wind turbine in the grounds of the campsite on a stunning moonless night, The Town lights glowing gently behind.
It might not look much, but that light curve was caused by the most distant known object in the solar system, Eris, passing in front of an 18th magnitude star. It’s only the second event involving Eris ever recorded, the first had two observations made by professional observatories in Chile, and the first ever by an amateur.
The event lasted for 60 seconds in the small hours of Friday the 30th of August and was made difficult by fog building up during the night making it harder and harder to see the target star! Fortunately there were enough photons hitting the camera to show what looks like a curved profile on the light curve that hints that Eris, like Pluto, has an atmosphere although previous observations didn’t give the impression of a curve and there are plenty of other less exotic explanations (such as low fidelity data!). We’ll just have to wait patiently until the next and hopefully brighter event when we can get much more data. One thing’s for sure: this observation will enormously help refine the known orbit of Eris, and make the next prediction even better!
Well, more simply an Asteroid Occults a star. I did this video for the Slooh team as a little bit of scientific outreach. Check out their narration here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUAqJqY-dTs
It’s important to get the word out: We need more Shadow Chasers, come play with us!
I can’t believe its been a week already and I haven’t followed up with the latest video! Here is the close approach last Friday from ‘the valley’. It was a splendid sight moving much brighter through the sky on its journey North. If you watch closely, you will see an artificial satellite and a meteor streaking through the sky at the same time. Outer space is a lot busier than you would imagine!
I’m afraid that there are no other great NEO events coming up soon, but we never know when something unexpected will arrive 🙂
The press say this rock is 19 times longer than the ocean liner the QE2 – that makes it many hundred times bigger! Fortunately it will sail by at 3.5 lunar distances away on the 1st of June. The nice part though is that it will have brightened to mag 10 and will be a joy to watch.
Here’s a preview I recorded recently:
And I say ‘You’re Welcome!’
The supremely successful live feed of Asteroid 2012 DA14 which was broadcast throughout the night and culminated in a show on NASA TV attracted over 7 million views and was NASA’s most successful Webcast ever.
For my part, I streamed for around four hours continuously and by token of thanks the NASA Team sent me a certificate and goody bag. A lovely gesture and a great memento to celebrate a fantastic evening!
