Asteroid follow-up
I am grateful to Dr Andrew Lowe for his assistance, although the body turned out to be 2001 FA 154, a known asteroid. I am at a loss as to why the SB Checker didn't return this asteroid, although it did return others that were on the plate.
I have now had a chance to look deeper into the images, and have identified 6 known asteroids + one as yet unknown.
Here's what I did.......
Images were calibrated and DDP in MaximDL, some background flattening was required. Screen stretch set to low.
There were some very obvious hot pixels in the images that could have been mistaken for asteroids, so I aligned the image with the hot pixels - that way they would be stationary and the stars would be moving slightly (you'll see in the animation below). I then zoomed the animation to about 400% and went through each visible part of the image looking for any motion [b]against[/b] that of the stars. In all I had 7 candidates + the comet[sup] [ch867][/sup]. I then put the central coordinates and observation time for observatory D90 into the SN Checker to obtain a list of potential candidates.
[s][sup] [ch867][/sup] For some reason the asteroids seem to be about 120 min behind schedule. Let me explain what I mean. If I line up the comet in Starry Night, the asteroids ephemerides are behind of where they are on the plate. Advance around 120 minutes and all the asrteroids line up in the error boxes, but the comet is out by 7 minutes at a position angle of 289 deg. :-? :-? [/s] Like Duh! :-[ I have been switching and swapping between windows, tabs & programs like a madman - I must have 20 tabs open, 2 instances of Maxim, Starry Night & goodness knows what else. I swapped to a high contrast version of my image in Starry Night while I was doing the finding, when I swapped back to the original I must have altered the alignment. Oh! Stoopid is me!!! :censored :censored :censored
First plate done.......the other tomorrow....
I have now had a chance to look deeper into the images, and have identified 6 known asteroids + one as yet unknown.
Here's what I did.......
Images were calibrated and DDP in MaximDL, some background flattening was required. Screen stretch set to low.
There were some very obvious hot pixels in the images that could have been mistaken for asteroids, so I aligned the image with the hot pixels - that way they would be stationary and the stars would be moving slightly (you'll see in the animation below). I then zoomed the animation to about 400% and went through each visible part of the image looking for any motion [b]against[/b] that of the stars. In all I had 7 candidates + the comet[sup] [ch867][/sup]. I then put the central coordinates and observation time for observatory D90 into the SN Checker to obtain a list of potential candidates.
[s][sup] [ch867][/sup] For some reason the asteroids seem to be about 120 min behind schedule. Let me explain what I mean. If I line up the comet in Starry Night, the asteroids ephemerides are behind of where they are on the plate. Advance around 120 minutes and all the asrteroids line up in the error boxes, but the comet is out by 7 minutes at a position angle of 289 deg. :-? :-? [/s] Like Duh! :-[ I have been switching and swapping between windows, tabs & programs like a madman - I must have 20 tabs open, 2 instances of Maxim, Starry Night & goodness knows what else. I swapped to a high contrast version of my image in Starry Night while I was doing the finding, when I swapped back to the original I must have altered the alignment. Oh! Stoopid is me!!! :censored :censored :censored
First plate done.......the other tomorrow....