Astroblog: Vesta Again

Friday, February 19, 2010

Vesta Again

Vesta near gamma and 40 Leonis on 18 February as imaged with my Canon IXUS (ASA 800, 1.3 sec exposure) attached to my 4" reflector with the 20mm eyepiece using my camera adaptor. This is an overlay of two images taken an hour apart, the image is upside down and back to front from the point of view of a binocular observer.

You can see Vesta has moved a little bit over the hour. Compare this to the images taken with the 8" and webcam, where you can see much more movement, due to the larger magnification, and my sketches. Click to embiggen.

The location of Vesta is actually a bit distorted, due to images taken in different parts of the eyepiece field, and the rotation of the field of viw over the hour.

Labels: astrophotography, Opposition, Vesta

# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 10:00 pm

Comments:

Cool. I am fairly sure I was able to see Vesta with the naked eye a few nights back. It was definitely in the Sickle, about in the middle when I saw it, and where Jodcast had said it could be found.

# posted by

Jim Prior : 10:03 am

Hey, it's great that you could see it, sadly LM never got below 5.5 anywhere I was where I could see the area around Vesta! Next year should be better!

# posted by

Ian Musgrave : 8:09 am