ASTRO: P/2010 A2 (LINEAR)

P/2010 A2 (LINEAR) is cataloged as a comet but it is no comet. It's the
remains of two asteroids that smashed together. I've seen no estimate
of when this happened. It was discovered in early January. I've been
wanting to try and image it since then but until a couple nights ago I
did have the skies to do it. This is a preliminary processing of the
data. It is moving rather slowly but even that motion (about 0.0032" of
arc per second) meant I had to have the mount track this motion to get
much due to it being so faint. There's no way to guide on a cloud like
this so no guiding was used. I had no way to align the 4 subs so this
is just a stack as it came from the camera. It's been enlarged from the
native 1" per pixel to 0.5" per pixel to better show the detail. This
is a crop of the entire image. The full image contained two asteroids
only one of which made the cropped version. It is in the lower right
corner. It is (50060) 2000 AA68 Since the scope was tracking the
debris cloud the asteroid trail is distorted from reality. P/2010 A2
(LINEAR) was moving south southwest while the other asteroid was moving
west northwest. Asteroids do fall into families with similar orbits.
These two are unrelated.

14" LX200R @ f/10, 4x10 minutes, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME. Taken
binned 2x2 then enlarged 2x to 0.5" per pixel.

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".

not easy, eh?


"Rick Johnson" wrote in message
om...
P/2010 A2 (LINEAR) is cataloged as a comet but it is no comet. It's the
remains of two asteroids that smashed together. I've seen no estimate
of when this happened. It was discovered in early January. I've been
wanting to try and image it since then but until a couple nights ago I
did have the skies to do it. This is a preliminary processing of the
data. It is moving rather slowly but even that motion (about 0.0032" of
arc per second) meant I had to have the mount track this motion to get
much due to it being so faint. There's no way to guide on a cloud like
this so no guiding was used. I had no way to align the 4 subs so this
is just a stack as it came from the camera. It's been enlarged from the
native 1" per pixel to 0.5" per pixel to better show the detail. This
is a crop of the entire image. The full image contained two asteroids
only one of which made the cropped version. It is in the lower right
corner. It is (50060) 2000 AA68 Since the scope was tracking the
debris cloud the asteroid trail is distorted from reality. P/2010 A2
(LINEAR) was moving south southwest while the other asteroid was moving
west northwest. Asteroids do fall into families with similar orbits.
These two are unrelated.

14" LX200R @ f/10, 4x10 minutes, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME. Taken
binned 2x2 then enlarged 2x to 0.5" per pixel.

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".

fantastic work Rick!

--
Martijn


"Rick Johnson" schreef in bericht
om...
P/2010 A2 (LINEAR) is cataloged as a comet but it is no comet. It's the
remains of two asteroids that smashed together. I've seen no estimate
of when this happened. It was discovered in early January. I've been
wanting to try and image it since then but until a couple nights ago I
did have the skies to do it. This is a preliminary processing of the
data. It is moving rather slowly but even that motion (about 0.0032" of
arc per second) meant I had to have the mount track this motion to get
much due to it being so faint. There's no way to guide on a cloud like
this so no guiding was used. I had no way to align the 4 subs so this
is just a stack as it came from the camera. It's been enlarged from the
native 1" per pixel to 0.5" per pixel to better show the detail. This
is a crop of the entire image. The full image contained two asteroids
only one of which made the cropped version. It is in the lower right
corner. It is (50060) 2000 AA68 Since the scope was tracking the
debris cloud the asteroid trail is distorted from reality. P/2010 A2
(LINEAR) was moving south southwest while the other asteroid was moving
west northwest. Asteroids do fall into families with similar orbits.
These two are unrelated.

14" LX200R @ f/10, 4x10 minutes, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME. Taken
binned 2x2 then enlarged 2x to 0.5" per pixel.

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".

Great effort Rick. This is the first amateur image I have seen of this
object.

Stefan

"Rick Johnson" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
om...
P/2010 A2 (LINEAR) is cataloged as a comet but it is no comet. It's the
remains of two asteroids that smashed together. I've seen no estimate
of when this happened. It was discovered in early January. I've been
wanting to try and image it since then but until a couple nights ago I
did have the skies to do it. This is a preliminary processing of the
data. It is moving rather slowly but even that motion (about 0.0032" of
arc per second) meant I had to have the mount track this motion to get
much due to it being so faint. There's no way to guide on a cloud like
this so no guiding was used. I had no way to align the 4 subs so this
is just a stack as it came from the camera. It's been enlarged from the
native 1" per pixel to 0.5" per pixel to better show the detail. This
is a crop of the entire image. The full image contained two asteroids
only one of which made the cropped version. It is in the lower right
corner. It is (50060) 2000 AA68 Since the scope was tracking the
debris cloud the asteroid trail is distorted from reality. P/2010 A2
(LINEAR) was moving south southwest while the other asteroid was moving
west northwest. Asteroids do fall into families with similar orbits.
These two are unrelated.

14" LX200R @ f/10, 4x10 minutes, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME. Taken
binned 2x2 then enlarged 2x to 0.5" per pixel.

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".