I woke up at 2:00am on Friday morning 24th June and looked out of the bedroom window and saw that it was clear.  In less than 1 hour, I had the car packed with camera gear and my Tak EM200 Mount and headed off to find skies a little darker than those of suburban Brisbane.

Just after 4:00am, after an 85 km drive, I found myself on the Esplanade at Toorbul and began to set up 100 metres or so from the car. It took me a while to figure out how everything fitted together again, then polar align and I was off.

I fitted a Canon EOS R5 with RF 15-35mm F2.8L lens to the Mount and began a series of test shots and alighted on 30 secs, F5.6 at ISO1600. The lens promptly dewed up, so I went back to the car for the Pocket Powerbox Advance (PPBADV – USB & Power Hub) and a 12V DC SLA battery and fitted a dew heater, managing to plug the 12V DC IN to the IN Socket (physically it is a 2.1 mm DC input female socket, just like the 4 x 12V DC Power outlets and the Adjustable Out as well). Wouldn’t do to get this wrong in the dark…

Remarkably I had everything I needed as I didn’t have a plan as this was an impromptu decision to go for it, so I just began shooting using the built-in Interval Timer of the EOS R5.

I used the Focus Assist “Green Triangles” to manually focus, but when I checked again after a few shots, I noticed that the images were OOF – probably a result of the dew strap tugging on the lens, as it was fitted over the focus ring, as I had nowhere else to position it.

Part way through the session, the PPBADV Blue LED began blinking so I went back to the car for the back up 12 VDC SLA and fitted that. I took this opportunity to point the camera up and grabbed a couple of shots towards the Zenith. Luckily, these came in use later as in those 3 images, I had also picked up Saturn. Sadly, Pluto was behind the trees by this stage.

PixInsight did a fantastic job of aligning and stacking the disorganized, chaotic set of files I emptied into it, although I had to manually blend in those lucky shots of Saturn in PS CC.

I have included crops of each target to provide some more detail on these regions.

How do you explain to Clyde William Tombaugh (discoverer of Pluto in 1930) that using modern equipment, I recorded the position of Pluto with a 15mm wide angle lens and a single 30 sec exposure…


Cheers

Dennis


   

   

The NEO 2022 MP is predicted to make a close approach on June 27 at 03:32 UT. ST4v predicts that this MP will reach peak brightness of 16.7 magnitude on June 27 at 0000 EDT when it will be in Libra moving at 24.6"/min. This object will require a large telescope or imaging system to capture it. It's too faint for my 13" scope.

Here's an Interactive Atlas chart showing the predicted path for 2022 MP from June 25-27: [attachment=2407]

This object will be visible from the southern hemisphere, weather permitting.

Just like 2022 MQ, CNEOS has given this pass a 'Rarity' of 1. Two in a row.

Phil S.

The NEO 2022 MQ makes a close approach on June 27 at 00:46 UT. ST4v predicts that peak brightness will occur on June 26 at ~0200 EDT when it will be 15.2 magnitude. It's already predicted to reach 16.5 magnitude tonight. At peak brightness the predicted motion is 26.3"/min when it will be in Sagittarius.

Here's an Interactive Atlas chart showing the predicted path through Aquila & Sagittarius: [attachment=2406]

This object will also be visible from the southern hemisphere, weather permitting.

CNEOS gives this pass a 'Rarity' of 1.

Phil S.

Hey Greg


Just was thinking about different filters Broadband, Narrowband, OIII, HA, etc filters for ST4 and if we define the wavelength's like the cameras in Imaging, that ST4 V could suggest the type of filter to use? Not sure how much would be involved or if it would be possible for ST4 to do that with the objects and all.    And was thinking it could be used for Imaging as well.

Just thinking
Thanks
Mike

The large asteroid Cacus (161989) will make a close approach (22.38LD) on Sept 1, 2022. Suspected of being ~1Km in size and listed as a Possible Hazardous Asteroid, I thought I might consider observing its close approach as it may reach a magnitude of 13.5 and be within reach of my 13" scope visually.

I did a bit of research and discovered it has been known since early 1978 and was provisionally designated 1978 CA when discovered by the German astronomer Hans-Emil Schuster at the European Southern Observatory, La Silla. Its orbital uncertainty is 0!

This rock has a high inclination of 26° so passage near our home planet is somewhat rare as they can only happen when near ascending or descending node. It's descending node is close to the Earth's orbit, but it's ascending node is quite distant, which is why the close approaches appear to be all in the first week of September, with none in the first week of March. I went looking for future passes under 22LD and only found 7 in the next 300 years.

I created a stereographic chart using the ecliptical coordinate system and plotted those passes positions in the sky. Pretty interesting stuff.
 
Turns out of the 2,275 PHAs, 350 have inclinations higher than 25°. So not as rare as I thought with about 15% having high inclinations. Only a few recent discoveries of PHAs have similar high inclinations (2022 CN1, 2022 EX, 2022 BA, 2022 BJ3 with fairly good orbital uncertainties). BJ3 has the highest (28.8°) of 2022 PHA discoveries.

   

Hi All,

The MPC has finally switched to using the epoch 2022 August 9 for their MP orbital elements in place of the 2022 January 21 epoch that they've been using since around October 2021. I just noticed that the CNEOS website had switched to the new epoch & suspected that the MPC had finally made the change. 

If you've downloaded the MPCORB file more than a week ago & have the 2022 Jan 21 epoch for your MP orbital elements, you might want to download the updated elements. There are ~1.2E6 objects in the file, if you download all of the object categories. SkyTools allows you to choose which types of MPs to download, if you don't want them all.

The 'Rarity' 2 close approach of (349068) 2006 YT13, a 0.496km rock is predicted to occur on July 19, but it will be 0.45 AU distant.

Another could arrive at any time though.

Phil S.

Hey Greg


I've been using SkyTools since v1 so I know the visual side pretty well already but always like to know more about the new stuff and with the imaging side, I'm finally taking the time to wrap my head around it.

Do you have a ST4 PDF of the help file?   I just like having one place to reference and I hate going to YouTube to look at stuff cause you have to sit through 10-20 min of a video to figure something out.


Thanks!
Mike

Is there a way to turn of the speech function when slewing the telescope to an object? I don't really care to hear the announcements. The visual information, watching the crosshairs migrate to the target are plenty enough.  TIA.

Dick

This one was detected on May 25, but just made it into the MPC's NEAs at Today's Epoch file for June 2. The MPC only reported 30 observations, all on May 25:

Observations

30 total observations over interval: 2022 05 25.214051 – 2022 05 25.534829

The last 12 appear to be from Japan.

According to the ST4v ephemeris, peak brightness was 12.9 magnitude on May 25 1000 EDT when Re was 23.9k km. The MP was in Aquila moving at 66.9"/sec.

According to CNEOS the close approach occurred on May 25 at 1505 UT at 17.426k km (0.00012 AU). The 'Rarity' of this pass was a 2.

This would have been a pretty impressive close approach if you could find it.

Phil S.

Hello All,

Christina LeGrand here.     Long-time user of Sky Tools 3.   I am just starting to use Sky Tools 4.   I cannot seem to find the filter for excluding objects from an observing list if they are below the horizon.   I must be overlooking it somehow.   Can anyone help me find this filter?    Thank you in advance.

I just found this Forum this evening and am very happy to be a new member.    I really love Sky Tools and rely on it a lot.

Thank you,
Christina LeGrand