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Young Imagers at Roper Mountain Astronomers

One of the best parts of the hobby of Astronomy is spending time with others who share your interests. In addition to imaging from Transit Dreams Observatory, when the weather permits, I am also a member of two local Astronomy clubs.  The Roper Mountain Astronomers, and the Astronomy club of Asheville.  On occasion we get the opportunity to observe the night sky from some nice dark areas, away from the light pollution.  I had one of those opportunities this past weekend with friends from the RMA.

Our vice-president Mike F. found a great spot in the Sumter National Forest in South Carolina.  With the permission of the rangers we set up at a nice spot on Lake Sedalia, overlooking the summer constellations of Scorpius and Sagittarius.  Our normal observing spot has a light dome to the south, from a major city, so this was a real treat.  To celebrate, I brought out “Caroline”, my 15″ dob.  She hadn’t been out for a while, so I figured I could hunt down a bunch of globulars to finish up my  Globular Cluster program from the Astronomical League.

A couple of young imagers I’d been harassing, er. , I mean advising, were in attendance with their DSLR’s and tripods to image the wide breadth of the summer Milky Way.  I’d thought about bringing a camera myself, but I wanted to rekindle the fire of my first love, visual observing.

I was amazed at the spectacular images they captured that night and had to share a couple of them with you here.  My wife even commented “They’re better than yours” when I showed them to her.

So, without further ado………….

What is amazing to me about this image, captured by Fleet B., is the clarity of the reversed reflections of Scorpius and Sagittarius in the water.  The thin clouds give an eerie nebulous feel to the composition of the image.

 

The image below, captured by James C., is the classic Milky Way shot as it stands tall in the southern summer sky.  Again the stars of Scorpius and Sagittarius shine against the perfectly still waters of Lake Sedalia.  As I added this image to the post the visual effect of the Milky Way struck me!  “A giant rainbow trout poised to dive head first into the lake.”

These  images reveal the hard work, skill, and perseverance of these two budding astro-imagers.

 

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New Comet!- Comet C/2017 O1

 

Comet C/2017 O1

A new comet has been discovered on images captured on July 19th by the All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae.  The comet designated C/2017 O1 by the MPC, will grace our skies this fall.  It was magnitude 15.3 at discovery, relatively bright for a newly discovered comet.  Its brightness at discovery is probably the result of it emerging from the glare of the Sun, where the large survey telescopes dare not point for fear of damage to their equipment. It will be a  northern hemisphere object into this fall.  Some predictions have it brightening to 7th magnitude, but it is really too early to tell how bright it will become.

 

Transit Dreams Observatory imaged the comet on the morning of July 26th before morning twilight.  Uncalibrated measurements with Astrometrica put the comet at magnitude 14.4-14.9

COD W33
CON Transit Dreams Observatory
OBS D. Wilde
MEA D. Wilde
TEL 127mm F7.5 APO Refractor + CCD
ACK MPCReport file updated 2017.07.26 06:51:22
NET UCAC-4
CK17O010 KC2017 07 26.36131 02 44 18.00 -08 12 57.4 14.4 N W33
CK17O010 KC2017 07 26.37129 02 44 18.91 -08 12 44.6 14.5 N W33
CK17O010 KC2017 07 26.37880 02 44 19.70 -08 12 35.8 14.5 N W33
CK17O010 KC2017 07 26.38783 02 44 20.53 -08 12 24.6 14.4 N W33
CK17O010 C2017 07 26.35808 02 44 17.70 -08 13 01.0 14.6 N W33
CK17O010 C2017 07 26.38664 02 44 20.43 -08 12 26.3 14.9 N W33

—– end —–

 

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TDO Reaches 50 Asteroids

Sometimes the weather and the Moon don’t cooperate in our quest to measure faint NEO’s and provide useful data that can refine their orbits.  Located in Southeastern United States, Transit Dream Observatory is subject to high humidity and often cloudy skies during the summer months. Even though TDO is in a rural area, the sky glow from water vapor in the air reduces how deep we can go.  On those nights if conditions are good enough to image I’ll still attempt to capture some brighter asteroids, to perfect my methods and reliability in imaging and measuring.

Last night was one of those nights, with the moon being almost full.  A list of 12 brighter asteroids was compiled to image.  In most cases asteroids like these have well established orbits that need little or no refinement.  Some technical difficulties with the equipment, and some user error in programming the software to automate the imaging did not allow me to get as far as I would have wanted.  I use Ccd Commander to program the operation of the observatory and integrate the image list into the imaging paramters.  A simple mistake in entering the start time in 12hr notation, instead of 24 hr. would have started the imaging operation  at 10:15 a.m. had I not caught the error.  This still caused a delay which prevented capturing some of the asteroids that were sinking in the west.

The weather also interrupted and ended the session early as clouds filled the sky.  In all 4 asteroids were imaged and measured.

(00006) Hebe, (00030) Urania, (00387) Aquitania, and (00599) Luisa

This brings the total to 50 asteroids measured, with 199 measurements.

COD W33
CON Transit Dreams Oservatory, Campobello, SC 29322 [dwilde.tdo@gmail.com]
OBS D. Wilde
MEA D. Wilde
TEL 127mm F7.5 APO Refractor + CCD
ACK MPCReport file updated 2017.07.08 01:02:51
AC2 dwilde.tdo@gmail.com
NET UCAC-4
00006 C2017 07 08.19267 17 24 19.63 -05 23 10.6 8.7 R W33
00006 C2017 07 08.20010 17 24 19.17 -05 23 13.5 9.3 R W33
00030 C2017 07 08.12781 14 20 09.85 -16 35 46.6 11.8 R W33
00030 C2017 07 08.13527 14 20 09.98 -16 35 46.7 11.8 R W33
00030 C2017 07 08.14271 14 20 10.10 -16 35 46.8 11.8 R W33
00387 C2017 07 08.11031 13 24 49.46 +12 37 00.6 11.8 R W33
00387 C2017 07 08.11777 13 24 49.83 +12 36 54.9 11.8 R W33
00387 C2017 07 08.12522 13 24 50.18 +12 36 49.4 11.8 R W33
00599 C2017 07 08.16720 14 58 40.31 -27 49 58.2 12.5 R W33
00599 C2017 07 08.17462 14 58 40.23 -27 49 58.9 12.4 R W33
—– end —–

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Asteroid (0070) Panopaea

Asteroid (0070) Panopaea is a main belt asteroid.  It is approximately 22 kilometers long by 2 kilometers wide.  Discovered in 1861, it orbits the sun in 4.23 years and rotates in 15.87 hours.  It was imaged and measured at Transit Dreams Observatory on June 12, 2017.

 

COD W33
CON Transit Dreams Observatory
OBS D. Wilde
MEA D. Wilde
TEL 127mm F7.5 APO Refractor + CCD
ACK MPCReport file updated 2017.06.12 12:03:11
NET UCAC-4
00070 C2017 06 12.08756 11 42 03.10 +09 33 41.5 12.8 R W33
00070 C2017 06 12.10662 11 42 03.75 +09 33 31.4 12.7 R W33
00070 C2017 06 12.12675 11 42 04.43 +09 33 20.9 12.6 R W33
00070 C2017 06 12.14693 11 42 05.13 +09 33 10.0 12.7 R W33
—– end —–

 

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New Menu

New menu items have been established for the website.  The data menu item is supporting sub-menus for the Asteroid data and Comet data measurements recorded and reported to the IAU Minor Planet Center.  The measurements with the “xxx” suffix were made before the establishment of Transit Dreams Observatory as MPC W33.