Hello,

I asked iTelescope support which of their telescopes had mounts that could track something like a comet. The answer surprised me. They said that they had very recently discovered a bug that was causing all telescopes on Paramounts to be unable to track at orbital rates. They are currently working on it. They had hoped to have T02 fixed, but I tested it it early this morning and it failed to track an asteroid.

We collided with this MP last night. CNEOS lists the close approach at  2023-Feb-13 03:07 ± < 00:01 UT at 3498 km distant. It was first observed at GINOP-KHK, Piszkesteto on 2023-02-12. The MPC shows 300 observations after discovery.

According to Wikipedia: 2023 CX1, previously known as Sar2667, was a metre-sized asteroid or meteoroid that entered Earth's atmosphere on 13 February 2023 03:00 UTC and disintegrated as a meteor over the English Channel near Normandy, France. [5]

This MP was listed on the CNEOS website yesterday, but wasn't included in the MPC's NEAs at Today's Epoch datafile either yesterday or today. It is listed on their main page as having a close approach distance of 0.01 lunar distances (LD). CNEOS lists 0.009 LD.

Phil S.

I am experimenting with a new series of video podcasts called Computer Side Chats.

Episode #1 is now live.



Please let me know what you think! Should I continue making these?

Hello, I have a question about the numbers generated for resolution under Exposure Opportunities on the Exposure Calculator.     For my Celestron 8 SCT with a ASI 533mc camera with a .63 reducer, it is giving me a resolution of  7.3.   This number is higher than I was expecting so I think I do not appreciate what it is telling me.



I found this in the help: 

• Res. - the effective resolution in arc seconds during the block of time. Effective resolution depends on the imaging system, seeing, airmass, and the Nyquist sampling theorem
  

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I've been trying to use T02 since it arrived in Utah, but I haven't been getting anything. Given the current size of the comet it should look pretty good, and the color camera makes it a lot easier to get a nice color image. 

Tonight I had something like one and a half hours scheduled that I had more or less given up on. But I got an email saying that my session had been started successfully! I logged in to see what was going on and found the telescope disconnected.

It had been a bit since my reservation had started, but I didn't have any images to download nor were there any log files. But I did think to see if there was preview image on the system, and there was! This was the only evidence I could find of my reservation.

   

Oh what might have been...

Hi Greg,

I created a datafile to use iTelescope T80 for Feb 6. It included a #waitfor command. I had an opportunity to grab T80 for free on Feb 5, but the #waitfor command caused the scope to stop the run. I was so excited that I got control of T80 that I forgot about that #waitfor command that the ST4i Scheduler created.

My question: how to prevent the Scheduler from adding a #waitfor command? Should I just eliminate it with a text editor?

I don't speak 'ACP'.

TIA,

Phil S.

Hello Greg

I have 60 or so targets in a list made with my old QSI camera.
I now have a ZWO camera.
This is a new installation, as my old PC died.
So, I created a new Target List with all my old QSI targets.

I now want to use Skytools in a normal generic fashion with the ZWO, but excluding previously imaged Targets with the QSI Camera.
Otherwise there would be duplicated targets.

Can you please advise how to do this?
Perhaps I am making a simple problem complicated?

Thank you
Adrien Richardson

CNEOS predicts that this large NEO will make a close approach on 2023-Feb-16 00:46 ± < 00:01 UT at a distance of 0.03073 AU. H=18.4 magnitude, V relative=24.65 km/sec, 'Rarity'=2 & Condition Code=0. This is a large object, 570m - 1.3 km so it's already 15.4 magnitude according to ST4v despite still being 0.15 AU distant. I thought that it might be interesting to keep an eye on it as it approaches.

Using MPC's orbital elements for the epoch 2023 February 5 00:00 UT, ST4v predicts that this NEO will reach a maximum brightness of 13.2 magnitude on February 14 traveling from Antlia into Vela at ~40"/min. This NEO is best visible from the southern hemisphere or below 30° N.

Here's an Interactive Atlas chart showing the predicted path of this NEO from 2023 February 11 - 17 for Brisbane, Australia: [attachment=2653]

Note that the times shown in the OI dialog Notes are EST.

Good hunting,

Phil S.

I have released a new tutorial video for both SkyTools 4 Visual & Imaging. It explores how the Seeing selection in SkyTools affects the calculations.

https://youtu.be/xB9IjwRD0Lg

I have been struggling to find a way to make my tutorials both better and less time consuming. This one came together very quickly, and it is my hope that I have found a good formula that will allow me to make many more. I need to remake some of the basic tutorial videos, but in addition to that, I intend to create one relatively short video every week or two that will focus on on aspect of SkyTools and how it relates to observation planning. This video covers both Visual and Imaging, but I'll probably trade off for each of them in the future.

Please let me know what you think of it, and if you have suggestions for videos that you would like to see.

Today at 17:45:45UT, the small rock (2023 BJ7) made an interesting close approach to Luna at ~12,870Km. Viewing from the surface of Luna, it would have been ~12.14 magnitude moving 2.4°/min across the Musca/Apus border.