One of the people at our table at the COSMOS star party this brought up the topic of long distance radio communications and the use of geostationary satellites to facilitate such communication. The idea of trying to image some of these satellites then came up and we discussed the possibility. So last night I decided […]
Motivation My main interest st the moment is in minor planet astrometry, particularly of brighter Near Earth Asteroids. In order to get precise astrometry of these objects it helps if they are not moving in a single frame. Slow NEO’s can have rates of several arcseconds per minute so being able to take short exposures
Supernova in M82 from Earlier in the week, now designated SN 2014J. Quite a bright supernova. It’s bright because it’s practically next door – 12 million light years. This is a Type Ia supernvoa caused by a white dwarf in a binary system gaining enough mass to trigger new nuclear fusion and cause the supernova
On Christmas Eve the Catalina sky survey spotted an object that had not been seen before. Shortly after McDonald observatory in Texas confirmed the object and further observations were needed to help nail down it’s orbit. We had clear skies on Christmas night so I checked the Minor Planet Center NEO page to see if