imaged Ceres (Halifax)

Woo hoo. Received a notification from the Burke-Gaffney Observatory.

Surprised this came in actually, given the terrible fires out east. They are desperate for rain.

The Ceres dwarf planet job was processed. This was the request I assembled (and edited) during my BGO presentation to the RASC London Centre on 19 May. 

It found its way into the evening queue and was imaged with the Apogee camera.

It appears a quick JPG was produced. Right. That happens when you request a single filter... Nice.

Luminance. 10 seconds. North is up; east is left.

The exposure worked out well. When I first submitted the job, we noted the default exposure was too long. I asked for a better duration and edited the request. Bit of serendipity.

§

Shared the good news with the London crew...

§

The bright star at the 1 o'clock position just below the label text is Tycho 00868-0298 1.

The obvious double star at the 8 o'clock is not an official double in SkyTools 4. The bright component is Tycho 00868-0340 1. 

I like the neat straight line of stars at the bottom right, angled from SE to NW. SkyTools shows the beginning (bottom-left) and ending stars as GSC 0868-0691 and -0336, respectively.

Can you see it?

It's kinda amazing it shows in a 10 second shot.

I can see the faint smudge of Z 69-30 at the 10 o'clock position, about the same distance at the Tycho stars. An elliptical according to ST4, also known as PGC 38007.

§

Regarding "near Denebola."

It was, on the 19th, closer to the butt of the Lion.

At the time of the capture, it was almost 4 degrees away.

Officially, Ceres is in Virgo.

§

For people who want to try processing the image, I provide the FITS file below.

The reference is to the file store at the BGO site, the completed observations queue, indirect or not on blogger.

FITS image: download

Remember, you'll need software that can open FITS files...

§

I had a go, with FITS Lib 4 on John Starbird. Power method at 0.6.

Then GIMP, with a slight contrast curve.