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Thanks for pointing this out Gary. I’m going to adopt this star and do regular filtered V measurements with my CMOS. There seems to be a good number of suitable APASS stars within 20-30arcmin for reference and check. David
Absolutely superb Nick. The sky is very busy now isn’t it! I see this all the time too.
Good plan about the astrometry. I’ve taken another sequence of images – after syncing the computer clock – and I’ll do the measurements tomorrow.
This NEO will pass less than a third of a degree from Pherkad Major (UMi) at around 4am on 2nd September, when it is expected to be around mag 15. It is brightening rapidly at the moment. Here is an animation of its movement from 2018/08/30 21:16:33 – 21:22:47 UT taken from Tynemouth, UK. What I presume to be a satellite also flashes by too!
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The Orion 8in f/3.9 astrograph (FL 800mm) is less than 500 pounds. I think with a Baader coma corrector it should be a good fit. This combo is on my wish list. The reviews that I have read have been very complimentary.
Not looking as impressive this evening (20 Jul / 2300 BST). Fingers crossed that this isn’t the beginning of the end….
LOL. It all ended amicably and I’m sure well reasoned arguments will – in the long run – lead to downward-directed, low colour-temperature, and proportionate-intensity lighting nationwide.
Last year – I forget precisely when – I had the telescope out on some land jutting into the sea, a great dark spot if winds are light. A curious member of the public came over and we had a good talk and I showed him some bright DSOs. He then proceeded to tell me that he was the person primarily responsible for installing the LEDs all over Tynemouth, and wasn’t it just wonderful ….
I believe the close approach was June this year (2018), so we’ve missed the best of it. It is low down in Capricornus now, and dimmer than mag 16, but I might have a go if I get a really clear southern sky.
The coma looks like it has expanded significantly since last night. Still bright and quite something.
Thanks for pointing out this object. I have been wanting to have a look – and get a low res spectrum with my StarAnalyser – but cloud has been rolling in from the sea night after night after night!
For anyone who is interested, here is a link to a new ATEL where the authors discuss photometry and spectroscopy of this transient. Not definitively a broad-lined type Ic supernova – previously, Robin raised uncertainty about this classification too.
Yes, I am sure that is right! It will be interesting to see what happens. There was a suggestion of spectroscopy in the article too, wasn’t there? As well as giving people a peek through the scopes at bright targets, I think the operators should deploy the latest EAA software for showing essentially-live pics to a wider audience. Lucky imaging of planets and near-live imaging of asteroids, comets, globulars etc is possible even from that location. I know from my interactions with the public that people are amazed by what’s possible now with the right hardware and software.
This object has gone ‘mainstream’, with articles in New Scientist (and the Daily Mail). The New Scientist article has a floating cow superimposed on a star field, in reference to the transient ID.
