Asteroid 2015 TB145 (PHA) close and bright flyby Oct 31

UPDATE: Oct 31st, 2015. Live coverage of Asteroid 2015 TB145.

Image Credit: P.Lake 10 Sec image from U69 T24 - travelling at 115 arc"/m at PA 35.4 07:00 UT (Available for media use with attribution to this blog)

Compare the two images - Above a 10 sec image, Below a two minute image which was stacked for movement of the asteroid.

UPDATE: Oct 31st, 2015 - From the NASA Press release this morning the amazing radar images have shown a dark dead comet,(and I am not making this up) looks not unlike a skull. The radar run went well getting down to a resolution of 7 meters per pixel. Its interesting those depressed areas are likely impact craters or collapsed areas from which the jets emerged when the comet was active. Recent studies of 67P by Rosetta have shown collapsed areas on Comet 67P where jets seem to originate from. This comet has been long dead, some studies have already been done to check for past meteor showers originating from its orbit - see the post on the SETI Institute Blog. Also from the press realease: "NASA values the work of numerous highly skilled amateur astronomers, whose accurate observational data helps improve asteroid orbits....". I hope to have more images tonight (weather permitting) - stay tuned.

Image credit: NAIC-Arecibo/NSF

UPDATE: Oct 27th, 2015 - Great set of images last night in the pre-dawn sky from New Mexico. The asteroid has brightened to Mag 15.8 and its apparent speed across the sky is starting to increase as it gets closer. [Also I should probably point out the faint halo you may be able to see is due to the strong moonlight reflecting off some dust on the primary mirror - the full moon was only 36 degrees away]

UPDATE: Oct 24th, 2015 - Finally got some images. The asteroid has brightened considerably to Mag 16.8/9 ish. No signs of cometary activity at this point. Its moving at 0.39arc"/m in a 120 sec image (so 0.78arc" in the image)and the pixel plate scale is 0.53 arc"/pixel so you can see a hint of softness on the trailing side. Definitly no cometary activity though - that's as close as I can go to getting it as sharp as you can get it.

Image Credit: P.Lake 2015 TB145 9x120 secs on the 0.7m Burnell, Cannon, Leavitt Telescope (BCL) T27 at Q62, SSO.

UPDATE: Oct 22nd, 2015 - Getting frustrated, the observatory has been closed due to bad weather for 4 nights.

UPDATE: Oct 17th, 2015 - NASA have updated details of the planned radar runs and expect to be able to get images with a resolution of 2 meters per pixel, they expect it to be the best radar run of the year. Also one other interesting aspect is the Tisserand parameter has been calculated at 2.937 which is just lower than the theoretical "boundary" (of 3.0) between Asteroid and Jupiter Family Comets. The other target of a radar run on 29th is 2009 FD, a well studied Apollo Asteroid, has a Tisserand parameter of 5.295. The seeing was a bit poor on the 14th so the image wasn't strong enough. The relative speed (across the camera chip) will slow to only 0.17 arc"/min on the 19th so I'll be able to stack the images really deep and get a good look at it. If the seeing is better tonight we might even get some more detail. I did look a bit fuzzy the other night but as you can see in the video the satellite that trailed through was very fuzzy as well - so I'm not reading to much into that at the moment.

Image/Video Credit: 2015 TB145 from H06, 12 x 180 sec exp stacked 4x3, 0.5m Planewave October 14th - P.Lake

A couple of times a year, the asteroid surveys throw up a surprise, with a large asteroid approaching very close to the Earth, with little advance notice. After last week's blog post about the Blogsphere overeacting to an Asteroid that astronomers knew about for 15 years passing at 65 Lunar Distances (LD), the "surprise" of course had to happen this week.

This will be an interesting two weeks, as Asteroid 2015 TB145 will cruise by Earth just outside 1 Lunar distance (1.3 LD). The asteroid is a target of the Arecibo Observatory (that big antenna that rose out of the lake in the majestic James Bond scene), and to get some really great radar tracking and detailed images, the ephemeris and position of the asteroid needs very high precision.

To give you an idea of the type of imaging to be obtained (see below), a similar situation occured last year for 2014 HQ124. These were some of the best radar images ever recorded, and some of my data was used to refine the orbit for targeting on that occasion.

Image Credit: Asteroid 2014 HQ124 Radar images from Goldstone - NASA/JPL

This asteroid is twice as big (between 290 and 650 meters diameter - most astronomers are calling it about 480m) and twice as close as 2014 HQ124, so you can only imagine how good the images should be. Professional Observatories and amateur astronomers will be tracking it closely to improve the precision of the orbit as it approaches.

I was quite chuffed when tracking 2014 HQ124 that my light curve had a few bumps in it and I made the call it was "not round" which was subsequently confirmed by the radar images.

So who knows what the next two weeks will turn up? What we know at this stage is that is going to be quite bright and could be visible in binoculars. Also its speed is very fast, but its moving slowly across the images at the moment as you can see, because of the angle its approaching us at. As it makes its close approach its going to do a nice "flyby" of the Crab Nebula M1 for Northern Hemisphere viewers on Oct 29th/30th Ian Musgrave has details on his blog shortly.

So stay tuned, I'll be following it closely and providing some regular updates.

Comet C2013 A1 (Siding Spring) approaches Mars - LIVE COVERAGE

Well finally the day we have all waited for has arrived. Here is our live coverage of the Comet approaching Mars just 6-7 hours before closest approach. Enjoy! [Also see here an earlier post: Where the hell is Siding Spring Anyway?]

Can you spot it?

Here is the high resolution inverse image in the V filter where its a little easier to see!

Perhaps my personal favourite!

This is a great image as it shows Comet Siding Spring dead center of the image (and dead center of the telescope mirror) with the overexposed Mars just off center and the "shadow" of the telescope truss and secondary vanes reflected in the extra light of Mars. The "Red Planet" Mars is brighter here in the R Filter.

Here is a short blinking video of the movement of both Mars and the Comet against the background stars. It consists of 5 images from the R filter and 3 from the V. Interestingly you can also see a cosmic ray hitting the CCD between the COmet and Mars in the first image of the 3 V filter images.

Enjoy!

Image credits: P.Lake Q62 T31 120 secs

And as Comet Siding Spring moves through perihelion it continues to fade. My view is that it didn't get close enough to the sun for some serious action, I guess when all the data is in we'll know more. Certainly though, it has been variously described as once in a million year event. The MAVEN Team at NASA will be rejoiceing in all that "free data" that showed up as the team were getting ready to lauch their mission.

Thanks for joining us on this brilliant journey!

Comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko - First amateur images 2014

As the European Space Agency's Rosetta Mission ramps up in a busy week of astronomy, Observatory W96 and Observers A. Maury, J.-G Bosch, J.-F. Soulier were the first amateurs to report positions of 69P (this apparition) to the MPC. Amateur images of Comet 67P have also been acquired by the Professional-Amateur Collaboration in Astronomy (PACA) for comet 67P led by Dr Padma Yanamandra-Fisher in partnership with Amateur Astronmers. The PACA group uses social media to connect amateur and professional astronomers to provide observation follow-up, monitoring and collaboration on science missions.

Comet 67P is about to be visited by the Rosetta Probe and ESA released their first photos, 2 weeks ago, of the comet starting to come to life as it heads on in towards the sun. The Rosetta mission is to follow the comet round the sun during the part of its orbit where the ices and dusts begin to discharge and form the tail. In november 2014, Rosetta will deliver a landed named Philae that will touch down on the nucleus of the comet to sample the particles as they become active.

Pictured here at a very faint magnitude 21.2 you can see Comet 67P, and the position of the Rosetta spacecraft is also marked (even though it is way too faint to see). ESA this week began a number of engine burns to slow the spacecraft as it approaches the comet.

The star field is quite crowded, and one of the most interesting parts of the video is the amount of "traffic" in this part of the sky. There were about 6 clearly identifiable asteroids in the full field of view, I have labelled a couple of the closer ones for reference. One asteroid in the field of view caught my eye as it seemed to dip in brightness, so it has been noted for further follow up as it approaches opposition in July.

Capturing the comet at such a faint magnitude required a deep "stacking" of images to account for the movement of the comet. "Stacking" is a process used to add a number of images together to improve the signal to noise ratio of the target. The comet was travelling so slowly relative to our point of view that I was able to resolve it with 12x300 second images. These images were then stacked in three groups of 4 at the movement of the comet - 0.16arc"/min at a position angle of 226 degrees. My images were quickly followed up by Rolando Ligustri, Bacci Paolo Backman. The astrometry (positional information) was included in MPEC 2014-K54

Previously in 2012, amateurs using the the Faulkes Telescopes had photographed 67P at aphelion (its furtherest point from the sun), also a remarkable effort!. In January 2014 the large telescopes in Chile, European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the Very Large Telescope (VLT) recovered 67P and have been following it regularly, this was the first occasion that amateurs had obtained images on this apparition.

For more information about the program check out the Year of Southern Comets article at iTelescop.net. PACA has a Facebook and Flikr group for members and a website under construction, it is open to any amateur astronomers who have their own telescope, are familiar with photometry and astrometry, are members of iTelescope.net, or have access to other telescope facilities and are prepared to work as a team on the science effort.

The Rosetta Spacecraft was named after the Rosetta Stone which assisted historians and archeologists decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphs, scientists hope that in the same way the data gathered will assist in our understanding of the early solar system.

Comet C/2013 R1 (Lovejoy)

Comet Lovejoy is determined not to be outdone by Comet ISON. However, reports circulating through social media this morning that Comet ISON has now reached magnitude 4, will make sure it has more work to do - as if comets had opinions anyway.

Comet Lovejoy continues to brighten and its ion and dust tails continue to grow. It's coma is a massive 3.7 arcmins now in a 180sec image, which is probably closer to 2 arcmins in reality as the movement probably overstates it a little. It is very hard to make a magnitude estimate now from CCD images. Magnitude estimates are now best made by binocular observations and comparing the brightness with the known brightness of nearby stars. Comet ISON is now a naked eye object. Lovejoy, I suspect is not far away either.

The encroaching moonlight was not very kind to last night's attempt to capture a nice shot. Early this week Rolando Lingusti took a brilliant shot of Comet Lovejoy that was featured in Tony Flander's article in Sky and Telescope.

Comet Lovejoy was discovered by Australia's talented and "best practice" comet hunter Terry Lovejoy, who was a speaker at this year's Advanced Astro Imaging Conference on the Gold Coast. As a keynote speaker he outlined his search methods, which were, I have to say very comprehensive and methodical. Catching two brilliant Christmas Comets in three years is not a fluke, its through sheer hardwork and relentless persuit of what the Oort Cloud throws up each year.

Image Credit: P.Lake 3 x 180sec R,G,B T11 iTelescope.net

I found it a bit easier to observe the details in the tail in the individual subframes Luminance channel, which I didn't use in the R,G,B image as I ws getting too much light to manage with the intruding moonlight.

Image Credit: P.Lake 180 sec Luminance T11 iTelescope.net

I refered to Comet Lovejoy as the "one wood" comet (golf club) earlier this week in reference to its slightly out of shape coma. This can be mainly attributable to the fast speed of the Comet travelling at 9 arcsecs per minute in a direction of about 35 degrees across the line of its tail. Its pretty hard to pull up that speed at 0.81 arsces per pixel

Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) November Update!

Comet Siding Spring continues on its merry way.

Currently overshadowed a little by the 2012 comets, ISON, Lovejoy, Linear 2012 X1 and Enke all feature this month in the northern skies. Siding Spring will have to wait till next year for its fanfare as it does a very close approach to Mars just after the MAVEN space mission arrives to sample Mars atmosphere.

None the less - Comet 2013 A1 (Siding Spring) is again high in the southern skies after midnight. These images are stacked in groups of 6 for the movement of the Comet to get a nice tight coma for astrometry.

All the iTelescope.net scopes haev been very busy chasing the morning comets so I thought tonight after I collected my 2013 TV135 data for MPC, I'd jump onto T31 at Siding Spring and chase it's namesake comet.

ENJOY!!!!

All eyes on ISON!!!

All eyes on ISON!!!! So as Comet ISON C/2012 S1 emerges from the dawn glare and the moon moves out of the way over the next couple of nights ..... all eyes will turn to Comet ISON. Its tail, at a rough guess is about 150 arcsecs now, and its visible for about 40 mins before dawn, providing a very narrow window for telescope users. Taken from +iTelescope.net on the 1st October, this is still way too close to the moon and had only just cleared the top of the shed. Another couple of nights and we should have some great images. I inverted this to try and manage some of the moon glare

Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) Update

I will be following this fairly closely now, as most of the northern scopes are out of action as its too low to the horizon in the northern hemisphere now, but still high in the southern hemisphere.

Where else would you go but to Siding Spring itself and the 0.5m planewave at iTelescope.net.

This image was taken last night and shows a 3-4 arc-sec tail, still not much more than a fuzzy dot.

Comet Siding Spring? - So where the hell is Siding Spring anyway?

Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) is a comet that is currently about to create some headlines! Perhaps not due to where the name came from.....but where its going!! Close - Very, very, very close to Mars in October 2014.

Many questions......where to start!

Image Credit: 4m AAT at Siding Spring. (c)P.Lake

Like - why is this such an A1 comet? Perhaps we won't go the humor angle, but as it is the first comet of the new year, discovered by Rob McNaught that's just what it is A1. Rob McNaught is a well known asteroid and comet hunter (Observatory Code E12) who is the front line of southern asteroid hunting with over 450 asteroid discoveries to his credit. Some people think its A1 because there is a very slim chance, it just might, do something that no one has ever seen before - hit Mars.

Comet discoveries are announced by the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams at the International Astronomy Union often after passing through the Minor Planet Center, and carry both the numerical designation and the name of the discoverer of the comet. Rob has so many discoveries he can pretty much name them what he likes.

C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) is an apt name as it is where Rob does most of his work. The Siding Spring Observatory is a premier astronomy site managed by the Australian National University, and home of the Australian Astronomical Observatory (AAO). See my article on CosmoQuest about the recent fires that recently ripped through the area. It is also known as Mount Woorat in the Warrumbungle Ranges - Warrumbungle means "Crooked Mountains" in the local Aboriginal dialect.

Image Credit: The "crooked mountains" from the viewing platform behind the 4m Australian Astronomical Telescope. (c) P.Lake

There is a most interesting way to find your way to Siding Spring. In a master stroke of tourism marketing the local shire has constructed the world's longest Solar System Drive where no matter which direction you come from, you drive through a 1:38 million scale Solar System with great signage of each planet at strategic little stops along the highway. AND YES FOLKS.......Pluto is still a planet in this solar system, or at least deserving of a sign still at the little town of Bellata on the Newell Highway.

Talking of long distance travel..... NASA has a mission on its way to Mars, and of course, three rovers already there not to mention the other satellites in orbit. The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) Mission is going to Mars to study the possible reason's for the loss of Mars atmosphere. It takes off on November 18 2013 and will arrive at Mars on September 16th 2014, just weeks before Comet 2013 A1 (Siding Spring) has its incredibly close encounter with Mars. The latest astrometry being processed suggests the Coma could actually dust the surface of Mars if its current MOID (minimum distance) is proven to be correct and doesn't increase with the collection of more data. Its still early days in the data gathering!

The MAVEN Mission folks need to go an buy a lotto ticket - seriously! Whilst the NASA folks get the calculators out and evaluate the pros and cons of losing three rovers Vs Parking a satellite sent to study the volatile evolution of atmospheres inside the coma of a comet. Time will tell what they are going to be thinking about that!

Image Credit: Dr Ian Musgrave's [Astroblog] simulation in the Celestia Software package

On top of that, the chatter on the Minor Planet mailing lists is that if a (still very unlikely) impact were to occur, the energy release would be about 3 times as much as the impact of Shoemaker-Levy 9 fragment G that hit Jupiter on my birthday in 1994. Well placed in Australia, with the first impact just after dusk, I was one of the first in the world to see it live on my little 4.5 inch reflector with a maxed out barlow. This literally had a big impact on me and was one of two events that re-engaged me with my childhood love of astronomy. The cloud kicked up by SL-9 fragment G was bigger than Earth!

So one of my favourite spots on planet earth - Siding Spring is in the news again, hopefully we can all share some more excitement about the home of telescopes in the "Crooked Mountains".

PS: I'll grab some photos of C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) from iTelescope.net's Observatory as soon as the weather clears.

Comet Hergenrother in Outburst

Today we are broadcasting live an interview with Carl Hergenrother and several astronomers across Asia.

Comet 168P Hergenrother has gone into outburst, and brightened several magnitudes. We take a look at a number of great images of the comet and discuss with Carl why this might have happened.

Carl was on the Catalina Sky Survey team and is now the Co-Lead Staff scientist on the OSIRIS-REx Target Asteroid mission.

Enjoy!

Comet Lovejoy's sunny death dive! Strike that - It lives on!

UPDATE: 2011/12/16 11:00 UTC


Oooops....no one told Comet Lovejoy it was supposed to conk out near the sun. It has surprised everyone by surviving the close pass and stunning the SOHO team with their birthday present.

As the saying goes "16 and never been kissed" December the 2nd was the 16th birthday of the SOHO mission and what better way to celebrate than Lovejoy "kissing" the sun and emerging from the other side. Sungrazing comets are so-called because they pass so close to the sun that they rarely survive the passage. Multiple satellite instruments have picked up the comet exiting from behind the sun with its tail gyrating wildly in the solar wind. Latest Lasco instrument photos now show it moving away, still very bright and a partially visible tail that is still mostly obscured by the pixel bleed from the CCD camera.

Comet Lovejoy has lived up to its expectations of being one of the brightest Kreutz Class (Sungrazing) comets of all time.

Blazing at mag -3 and out of view for all "earthbound" observers, it is expected to cease to exist sometime in the next 12-18 hours as it approaches within 1.8 Solar radii.




This spectacular sequence from the LASCO C3 instrument on the SOHO observatory records the final death plunge. Note the horizontal artifact is due to the brightness of the coma which overloads the well count of the CCD camera causing pixel bleed.

In the highly unlikely event that the comet does make it round the sun it will be even more news worthy!

"The SOHO/LASCO data used here are produced by a consortium of the Naval Research Laboratory (USA), Max-Planck-Institut fuer Aeronomie (Germany), Laboratoire d'Astronomie (France), and the University of Birmingham (UK). SOHO is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA."

UPDATE: Lovejoy appears to have survived its passage, scientists noting with interest the presence of an Ion Tail in a addition to the dust tail, this has apparently not been seen before in a Kreutz Class comet. SOHO website and NASA having been live blogging and its a little early to know yet if we are going to get a great Christmas comet.

Stars and Stripes - Supernova and Comet Garradd

Two of the great great favorites of amateur astronomers are Comets and Supernova, Both are stunning all this week, with Garradd and 2011fe now both in reach of binoculars and small telescopes.

In a very busy week, I managed to nab a couple of shots of Comet Garradd and run them through Maxim DL and Photoshop.

A pretty good result, promising to be the best comet of the year.

You can follow some regular updates over at GRAS.

Its also been an amazing week in M101 with a Supernova on the 23rd now pushing magnitude 10.5 and nearing its maxima, the rate of brightening seems to have slowed, I'm expecting it will top out around 10.3m.



This was the shot in the V Johnson filter today with the data submitted to the AAVSO. Over 600 observations from 73 observers now make up the most remarkable light curve ever thanks to the early detection by the Palomar Transient Factory.


M101 is only visible from the Northern Hemisphere, so you'll have to enjoy SN2011fe from here.

Comet Garradd

Here is today's photo of Comet Garradd. This shot is 20 Min exposure in the luminance channel and is most interesting as its passing a very tiny galaxy, and looks a pretty picture!

Finally the weather cleared and I got the nice color data I was after. The comet is moving quite swiftly at the moment and working up a stunning full color image is pretty hard work.

Garradd Lights Up!

Comet Garradd C/2009 P1 is making nice progress towards its perihelion (closest approach to the sun) on Dec 23rd. Its a lovely comet and should brighten further of the coming months and has the best chance of becoming our next "naked eye" comet. I hope to have some better images soon.

It had a nice little double tail going about a week ago, but that seems to have swung away from us a little. My attempt to get a nice full color version was foiled by cloud knocking out the blue channel on the 24th, so I added some shorter luminance into the Blue channel. [Below]

This image, is 600sec Red, 600 secs Green and 360 secs Lum ....with comets you kind of need to get it all in one night to match it up with the background stars. I am playing with a new technique to process the stars and the comet seperately in two different layers and this can be quite tricky....and when you are missing the blue channel - I'll reset and try again another night.


However for now the image is stacked for movement of the comet against the background stars, which appear in each color channel. Comet Garradd is currently around magnitude 8.5 (according to other observers, as I haven't done any photometery on it).

UPDATE:29th July.

I finally got back to try and grab the blue channel that I missed the other night.
You actually have to start again, as the stars of course, will be in a different place. The Weather foiled me again so I jumped on board our Scope in Nerpio Spain, G17, and grabbed another color run. Here I have 40 Mins of RGB stacked for movement of the comet. G17 also has a tighter FOV so the Coma is larger here.

Image: Comet Garradd from Nerpio, Spain. 29th July 2011. (c)P.Lake

Now, thats where the fun really starts. Once you have good color you have to then create a superb image by seperating out the background stars from the Comet itself. So you do two stacks 1) a color combine in Maxim DL stacked for the coma of the comet and 2) another color combine stack of the same frames but stacked to the stars (with the comet trailed.



Then you use Photoshop>Filter>Noise>Dust and scratches (increase the Pixels to suit) and remove the trailed stars from the Comet Stack, Then use Photoshop>Select>color range to pick out (only) the Stars (and the Comet Coma) and copy to another layer, erase the Coma then add the two separate layers back together. I put the Stars on top (as they are the only thing in that layer, the comet next in its starless sky and then add a solid black background underneath and back the the opacity of the comet layer off by about 5-8% just to soften it up a little, and assist the layers to blend.

If you have done well you should have a stunning comet, and individual star colors that give real depth to the photo.

Its an amazing result, you can then treat each layer with curves and levels to make sure you have it just right.

Enjoy!

You can take your own photo here.

Comet C/2009 P1 Garrad

Comet Garrad C/2009 P1 photographed today moving trough Pisces and Aquarius. It should be a real treat after the full moon passes.

This is a single 300 sec image I took with a Clear filter on GRAS' 17 Inch Planewave in Spain.

Garrad promises to be one of the best of the comets of the year, and already is brighter than Comet Elenin which is not currently visible to northern hemisphere viewers.