Tomorrow night might be a good time to attempt to track down this newly found rock from space. Looks like b4 midnight on September 2nd it will be well placed (high and south) and bright enough to be spotted in mid sized scopes. Great phase angle from twilight (2nd) until 4am on Sep 3. Looks to be tracking thru Equuleus into Aquarius at near 2'/min!

The orbit is somewhat uncertain as there are only 68 observations spanning just two days. Make sure to run the ephemeris from your location as it is passing ~665,000 Km (1.7LD). CNEOS indicates it may be 110m diameter.

I got a little carried away in testing the new iTelescope, T69, at Siding Spring. It's a simple color system, and I almost have it dialed in for SkyTools.

   

Hello everyone,

I was doing some testing with the newly available iTelescope T19, and got a deep image of C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS). I thought I'd share it here. This is a stack of 3x10-minute images in the Lum filter.

   

Hi,

Need help with creating the Caldwell Object List and importing into Skyhound. I see the Messier Object List is included with the software download.

Thanks,

Dave

Hi All,

This is a weird object that I found using the DBPS after updating the MPC elements for NEAs at Today's Epoch today. It's very bright & now moving retrograde WRT earth at 0.03 AU. The mag is currently 10.8, but ST4v estimates it will brighten to 9.5 mag between Sep 3-10 as we overtake it. It's not moving very fast & its orbit is close to earth's.

Might be worth a look if anyone's interested. I'm surprised it didn't appear in previous DBPS searches. It's also not listed on the CNEOS page at JPL.

Good hunting,

Phil S.

I have ST4 Visual configured to audible say when the scope is slewing to a target, when the slew is complete, and when I have synced the scope to the cursor position.  But I cannot get the scope's position to show up with crosshairs on the IA chart like with ST3 PRO.  I would appreciate learning what I am missing in regards to the settings.

Yours truly,

Jack Huerkamp

We rock hounds are just not getting any breaks. I fooled around with 2016 AJ193. A fairly large rock, think high H and fair size (1.3Km +/- .4km) that has a somewhat close approach (~9LD) on 21 Aug ~11CDT. Yep daylight! Then big moon and below our horizon. Shucks again! But, because of its size and approach profile, the phase presents a good view and brighter prior to close approach. A possible shot may present itself just b4 Nautical twilight ~5CDT the 20th. It then climbs as twilight approaches. Work it out from your location as it may be bright enough (mid 12 to mid 13) to follow and the error box is <1minute. Speed ~1'/min moving NE out of Fornax into Eridanus. Here is my dope from front yard. Unfortunately for me, from my yard, will be looking into Willis, Conroe and Houston. Not sure it's worth the drive to dark skies on a non-observing weekend.

   

Hi Greg,

I'm sure that you are the only one who can answer this question. In my version of ST - 4.0j R2 - Current Comets is found in the Default folder. Is there a way of moving this list to the Current folder? Actually I tried but it didn't take. 
Dick

Caught by the Zwicky Transit Facility on Palomar Mountain on Aug 2.2UT, this little rock whipped in from above and passed on the dark side 2/3 toward the moons orbit. Moving past my yard low in the west in morning light (07:42CDT) at >15'/min and possibly in the mid 12 magnitude range. Another discovery too late to make hay, although this rock was only bright in daylight, it's just so frustrating to get late updates. I seriously doubt that I could have tracked it due to it being so near to the earth/moon system - lots of gravs. It's difficult to quickly get these elements into the software and then the ephemeris may have large errors. Not able to check this one, but discovered and tracked by 5 observatories for nearly 22 hours as it swung by.

Greg can I just check that the current comets has been updated in ST4? The date on the list says July 1st but the other current lists and the ST3 ones seem to say Aug 1st so I assume this is just a list title issue?

Owen