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Are the moons of (87)Sylvia amateur-detectable?



 
 
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Old August 20th 05, 02:17 PM
Thomas Womack
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Default Are the moons of (87)Sylvia amateur-detectable?

I imagine the answer's "no", given that really quite sophisticated
telescopes with adaptive optics were used to discover them in the
first place; on the other hand, I don't know how many amateurs are
likely to have stared at high magnification with a large aperture at
random two-digit-number asteroids. The magnitude difference is about 4
and the maximum separation of the outer moon at apo-sylvia when the
system's as near to Earth as it gets is about an arc-second; if the
asteroids weren't so faint, that's not an impossible observation with
a webcam on a medium-sized amateur scope.

[the primary has 'absolute magnitude 6.94'; at 3.5AU from the Sun and
2.5AU from Earth, I _think_ that makes the real magnitude
log_2.5(3.5^2 * 2.5^2) fainter, or about 11.5; 15.5 for the
secondary. This sounds likely to be infeasible, but there are
unexpectedly good observers with extremely good equipment here]

Tom
 




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