This is an intentional image of asteroids. I was fortunate to go to
high school with Pete Schultz. We helped form the Prairie Astronomy
Club in 1961 and did a lot of astrophotography together from a cow
pasture south of Lincoln Nebraska. I found many cow pies the hard way,
he seemed to avoid them. He worked for a camera store and would show up
with some really nice gear the store let him field test. So he was
using thousands of dollars worth of gear while I was using home made
stuff and el cheapo cameras and lenses scrounged from the used bin at
camera stores. Now he shoots holes in comets and gets sued by a Russian
astrologer for ruining her so called forecasts. I wish I was kidding,
but he no longer attends conferences in Russia for fear of being arrested.
I tried taking his asteroid last summer but it was lost in dense Milky
Way and further away so much fainter. Conditions were much better this
year. It was against a far less dense star field and a couple
magnitudes brighter at magnitude 17.3.
There are three other asteroids in the image.
(168440) 1998 WT2 at magnitude 19.2
(147923) 2006 VK34 at magnitude 19.3
(19753) 2000 CL94 at magnitude 17.1
These are all estimated magnitudes by the minor planet center.
Sometimes I find I disagree with their estimates but these seem quite
reasonable compared to my data.
The naming citation for his asteroid reads:
"Peter H. Schultz, a geologist at Brown University, has studied
cratering phenomena experimentally and in the field. He has played a
major role in defining and developing the Deep Impact mission,
particularly through his cratering experiments at the NASA Ames Vertical
Gun Range."
Animation and still image made from the same data.
14" LX200R @ f/10, L=6x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME
The animation is at the Prairie Astronomy Club website (the one we
helped found 50 years ago). At 2 megabytes it will take a bit to load.
http://www.prairieastronomyclub.org/...hultz-anim.gif
The still and annotated images are attached. None of the galaxies in
the image had red shift data available so only the asteroids are pointed
out on the annotated image.
Rick
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Correct domain name is arvig and it is net not com. Prefix is correct.
Third character is a zero rather than a capital "Oh".