Phil mentioned this asteroid today that was only 10.5 million kilometers away from us when I imaged it tonight.
http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2...steroid-found/
I had a 30 minute window after dark before the clouds rolled in. No time to image anything but the asteroid. I didn't even have time to get color data. But its my first image in weeks. It took radar imaging to see the two companions. Visually it's just a dot moving about 8" of arc per minute. Unfortunately, it was right near the moon whose light was hitting the corrector plate even with the dew shield. This put some nasty gradients in the image. But it will be even closer the tomorrow night. I estimate it was about 12.5 magnitude so visible in a 6" scope. It will brighten to about 12th magnitude over the next week or so. The motion should be obvious over only a few minutes time.

I took one 30" image, waited 60 seconds plus about 5 seconds for it to download and took another to show its motion so this covers about a 23 minute time period counting frame download time. It was well positioned in Gemini but is heading south fast. It will be closest about the 20-21 when it will be a bit closer than 10 million kilometers or a bit over 6 million miles. It will still be moving about 8" of arc per minute. It's not in an orbit that can cause it to be a threat now or in the next few tens of thousands of years.

Ephemeris is available at:
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/MPEph/MPEph.html
Enter 2001 SN263 Be sure to use capital "SN" and put a space after the year. Otherwise it will say it can't find it. Touchy software apparently.

14" LX200R, 15 30 second frames, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME, image scale 1.5" of arc per pixel.

Rick

Attached Images

2001SN263L15X30.jpg (114.1 KB, 54 views)

Very nice! So cool, in fact, that I just put it up on my blog. :-)

__________________
Phil Plait
The Bad Astronomer
http://www.badastronomy.com
badastro@badastronomy.com

Would you please make an animated gif of the files too? If not, if you post the individual frames I'll make the gif...

Well done on the imagery!

Eric P / MizarKey

These are spaced too far apart for a good animation, it would be very jerky. I did take some other frames before this that were hit by nasty clouds. They were taken with no gap so would be a lot smoother but were taken through clouds so need lots of individual frame processing. The size would be too big for this forum's bandwidth limit of 146.5k. I'll have to post it elsewhere. Right now I'm battling 36 hours of snow and a blower with a frozen gas line.

Rick

Awesome Rick!, A fine capture and thanks for the info on it. Super job and Clear Clear Skies!