(4179) Toutatis

Last night (December 12, 2012 UT or 12-12-12 which my neighbor thinks it a bad omen) the asteroid (4179) Toutatis passed by us at a bit over 4.25 million miles from us when the clouds opened (first time in over a month) for 2 15 minute openings then shut me down again. I had to work fast so the results aren't what I wanted.

I used the data to make two images here. I hope to eventually get a movie from this data. But with the holiday season, time is short so this is a quick process.

For about 10 minutes I had a clear window to grab 20 30 second frames while the Paramount tracked Toutatis using its orbital elements. Then the clouds shut me down for a bit. When they opened again I got 20 more 20 second frames, this time tracking at sidereal rate plus 3 30 second frames in each color. I wanted more but the next red frame was clouded out with the clouds never opening again. I used the first frames to make a mono image with trailing stars showing its motion over 13 minutes (the extra 3 minutes is due to the slow download speed of the camera). I then made a LRGB image using the later data taken tracking stars rather than the asteroid. Then I used the trailed asteroid color frames to determine the RGB values to the asteroid. Rather than 6 colored dashes for the asteroid I took the round asteroid L frame and colored it with the RGB data and inserted it where it was in the 10th frame tracking at sidereal rate.

I whipped this together in about an hour between holiday related tasks and shoveling off the decks from the dusting they got last night.

Rick

I did it again. In my rush I grabbed a wrong file. Here's the right one.

I should add the images are at 1.5" per pixel rather than my usual 1" per pixel though they were taken at 1".

Rick