I think it looks like a grumpy fish. Maybe that's because I'm grumpy
about not being able to follow up on the asteroid.

Rick


Richard Crisp wrote:
good for you Rick

I went over there one night to find the object but didn't succeed before
clouds stopped me

i've not been back

that's a nice shot of a cool nebula. it looks to have reflection as well as
emission components.

a nice job indeed

pretty cool about the asteroid. they are getting tougher and tougher to find
uncharted ones




"Rick Johnson" wrote in message
...

Back on Dec 2 Richard Crisp posted a shot of SH2-240 (Simeis 147) in
Taurus, a super nova remnant that covers many square degrees. Far more
than I can hope to cover but up in the upper right was a bright blob,
LBN826-827. That was my size object so it went on my to-do list.
http://www.narrowbandimaging.com/sha...omoon_page.htm

On December 9 about 6 hours UT I started in on this guy. I was imaging
through all my ice that gives horrid gradients but what the heck. As it
was coming in I saw two asteroids on the frame. I checked the minor
planet center and identified them.

Next morning I calibrated and combined the images to see how bad the
gradients were. They were very bad. But looking closely at them I
found 2 more asteroids in the image. NEITHER were on the minor planet
center's MPchecker webpage. Or so I thought.

The web page defaults to mag 20 limit. Having never, even in best of
conditions, found one that was fainter than this it never dawned on me
to set it lower but when these didn't show up I did set it to 20.5.
Nope still nothing. Then in total stupidity I set it for -21. ONE
popped up and did match the position of one of my unknowns. The minor
planet center says it was expected to be magnitude -20.6. Yikes! Can I
go that faint though this gunk or is their estimate wacko? What about
the other one? Nothing. No matter where I set the magnitude limit it
wasn't there.

I HAD A NEW ASTEROID! But it was cloudy the next night and it has been
cloudy ever since. Now after nearly 3 weeks there's no hope of finding
it again. So I almost found a new asteroid. But for now it is lost is
space. I should have put out a plea for someone like Richard with his
18" to look but dummy didn't have his brain in gear.

I've attached two images. The first ID's the asteroids though I left my
marks faint. The three known ones are on the right, west, the unknown
to the upper left of the nebula, north east.

The three known ones from left to right (east to west) a
2002 PS54 mag 20.6
2006 QS55 mag 19.6
2000 SB260 mag 18.4

I measure the positions of the unknown (center of trail) at about:

12 09.25468 05h 52m 23.12" +27d 08' 58.05"

The nearest asteroid the minor planet center knows about is magnitude
21.9 (I know that is beyond my limit!) that is 2.4' east and 1.9' south
of this position.

I've also attached the full frame without the ID info.

14" LX200R @ F/10, L=4x10', RGB=1x10' (binned 3x3), STL-11000XM,
Paramount ME

Rick


--
Correct domain name is arvig and it is net not com. Prefix is correct.
Third character is a zero rather than a capital "Oh".