ASTRO: (18024) Dobson

I had wanted to catch Asteroid (18024) Dodson which is named for the
inventor of what are now known as Dobsonian reflectors who died January
15, 2014 at age 98 but weather didn't cooperate. I finally settled for
getting it through some sucker holes. The asteroid naming citation sums
up Dobson's contribution to amateur astronomy saying: "John Dobson (b.
1915) is one of the most important popularizers of astronomy of the
twentieth century. His telescope design has spread around the world and
enabled amateur astronomers to use larger apertures than before. He
demonstrates a passion for sharing his knowledge of the universe with
the public at large."

While he could have made a fortune selling rights to the mount to
commercial telescope makers he intentionally made it freely available to
all. While he held some rather odd ideas about the universe he loved
showing it to the public. A good article on him is at:
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/...240456881.html
.. Be sure to catch the video mentioned (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJCN4HEXDqE ) as he talks about some of
his rather unorthodox views of cosmology. I suspect they were heavily
influenced by his Vedantan monk philosophy.

My weather here has been awful this winter. Conditions were poor the
night I captured this image. At an estimated magnitude 19.4 it showed
rather faintly in my 10" framing image. When the data came in that
object didn't appear to move but a "star" about 5 minutes to the north
was moving. I thought it odd the minor planet center so missed its
orbit. Normally it is dead on with well known asteroids like this. It
wasn't until I processed the image I saw the object I thought was
asteroid Dobson was indeed the asteroid. The moving star was a
different, brighter, asteroid that was trying to steal the show from
Dobson. Neither is moving very fast. Both are nearing the end of their
retrograde motion thus are rather stationary in the sky. Dobson moved
only a bit under 6" of arc during the luminosity frames while the scene
stealer moved a bit over twice as far. Its designation is (29723) 1999
AD24 and is listed at magnitude 18.8.

The asteroid is in eastern Taurus not far from Orion's shield. This
area is poor in DSO objects. While a few galaxies in the field are
listed at NED they have no information on distance, size, magnitude,
etc. The few they have are from the 2 micron survey and identified only
by position. So I made no effort to annotate them. But I have included
an annotated image as finding Dobson's nearly star-like asteroid is
difficult without having it pointed out. I originally planned on making
a movie of the asteroid moving through space but it motion is so slight
that's not possible given my poor conditions here. I couldn't even get
a second round of color due to the sucker hole closing completely.

14" LX200R@ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=1x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Rick
--
Prefix is correct. Domain is arvig dot net

Nice catch Rick. Quite a coincidence that another minor planet was in such a
short distance.
John Dobson certainly has immortalized his name with his invention.

Stefan

"Rick Johnson" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
...

I had wanted to catch Asteroid (18024) Dodson which is named for the
inventor of what are now known as Dobsonian reflectors who died January
15, 2014 at age 98 but weather didn't cooperate. I finally settled for
getting it through some sucker holes. The asteroid naming citation sums
up Dobson's contribution to amateur astronomy saying: "John Dobson (b.
1915) is one of the most important popularizers of astronomy of the
twentieth century. His telescope design has spread around the world and
enabled amateur astronomers to use larger apertures than before. He
demonstrates a passion for sharing his knowledge of the universe with
the public at large."

While he could have made a fortune selling rights to the mount to
commercial telescope makers he intentionally made it freely available to
all. While he held some rather odd ideas about the universe he loved
showing it to the public. A good article on him is at:
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/...240456881.html
.. Be sure to catch the video mentioned (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJCN4HEXDqE ) as he talks about some of
his rather unorthodox views of cosmology. I suspect they were heavily
influenced by his Vedantan monk philosophy.

My weather here has been awful this winter. Conditions were poor the
night I captured this image. At an estimated magnitude 19.4 it showed
rather faintly in my 10" framing image. When the data came in that
object didn't appear to move but a "star" about 5 minutes to the north
was moving. I thought it odd the minor planet center so missed its
orbit. Normally it is dead on with well known asteroids like this. It
wasn't until I processed the image I saw the object I thought was
asteroid Dobson was indeed the asteroid. The moving star was a
different, brighter, asteroid that was trying to steal the show from
Dobson. Neither is moving very fast. Both are nearing the end of their
retrograde motion thus are rather stationary in the sky. Dobson moved
only a bit under 6" of arc during the luminosity frames while the scene
stealer moved a bit over twice as far. Its designation is (29723) 1999
AD24 and is listed at magnitude 18.8.

The asteroid is in eastern Taurus not far from Orion's shield. This
area is poor in DSO objects. While a few galaxies in the field are
listed at NED they have no information on distance, size, magnitude,
etc. The few they have are from the 2 micron survey and identified only
by position. So I made no effort to annotate them. But I have included
an annotated image as finding Dobson's nearly star-like asteroid is
difficult without having it pointed out. I originally planned on making
a movie of the asteroid moving through space but it motion is so slight
that's not possible given my poor conditions here. I couldn't even get
a second round of color due to the sucker hole closing completely.

14" LX200R@ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=1x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Rick
--
Prefix is correct. Domain is arvig dot net