For my astro-geek friends, how about something a little closer to home! Here are some of the many objects that the human race has littered our orbit with. They put on a spectacular show for me tonight whilst I was out observing 🙂
Category Archives: News
Happy Xmas 2015
How much astronomy can you get in a single photo!
Here we see a full moon rising on Christmas day, surrounded by anti-crepuscular sun rays and on the belt of Venus (The Earth’s rising shadow)
Bye Bye Scorpius
It’s been a great season, see you again next year!
Conjunction 2
Up close and personal this time. It’s actually three photos blended together to see Venus, Jupiter and it’s moons together at the correct exposure. A lovely naked eye treat, I hope you managed to spot them hanging out in the West together!
Rings!
It’s not often I can stake my claim to a first, but here is double one. First amateur to capture a Centaur (that’s an asteroid between Saturn and Neptune) occulting a star and also the first amateur to record the rings around an asteroid!
Charliko is the only known asteroid to have rings. They were discovered last year by a team of professional astronomers lead by Prof Bruno Sicardy who is a great friend to the amateur and whom provides us with great predictions so that we can help provide him data. This event was well attended by the Australian Occultation faithful and I recorded in somewhat difficult circumstances the event. Unfortunately I was the only person to capture it – the more ‘chords’ the better the scientific payload but Bruno assures me that the data will be added to the original observations and will significantly improve the positional data that we know about the rock.
And that is great news, because with better predictions, we can make even better observations in the future. Sweet.
Occultation by (552) Sigelinde
Here’s a neat event from tonight. This asteroid cast a 16.354 second shadow across Samford, and I caught it on video! The event was a little longer than expected and it is a poorly defined object. We learned that it is probably lozenge shaped rather than round and it disappeared gradually suggesting maybe an irregular protrusion (sticky-out bit!) at the leading edge.
Mega Moon
A very special occultation of Saturn
It is not often that a planet gets blotted out by the Moon, and even rarer to have my favourite planet, Saturn, disappear behind a crisp dark edge as we saw this week. I partnered the broadcast with Slooh once again and enjoyed a very pleasant evening chatting on air with the team!
2014 DX110
This one came from nowhere!
2014 DX110 was discovered only three days ago, and flew by tonight at less than a Moons distance from us. It is on the Possible Impactors list with an impact with Earth scheduled for 2046 – As we learn more, and refine the known orbit, we will hopefully remove it from the list!!!
Whilst it’s probably under 50m, I still would prefer to avoid it (if I live that long)
Sorry for the poor quality, it was a misty night and low in the North…
Iridium Flare over Samford
Ever seen an Iridium Flare?
The Iridium communications satellites turn their solar panels towards the sun at predictable times during their orbits and cause them to brighten dramatically for a few seconds as they pass.
I photographed this one this morning at 4am, not normally a time I’d be up, but the dog was demanding attention and then my Iridium flare app started screaming too! I took the camera out as well; this is the first time I have tried to capture one and am glad I did as the event was bright at mag -8 and passing high in the West.
So go find an app (there are plenty freebies) and have a look – they are very lovely to watch and happen every few days – Happy hunting!
 [For the photographers: Canon 650d, Samyang 14mm, ISO 400 for 30 seconds]