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The material looks to be very coarse and rather angular in shape.
Not much evidence of fine dust.
My take on this, David, is that the assemblage formed by gravitational attraction from debris whilst at relatively high, refractory temperatures – quite unlike a comet precursor. I wonder how rich it is in carbon and is any of it in nearly pure elemental form?
Yes – I visited here when Joan G. owned the place. It would be a suitable site for sure.
La Palma is relatively easy to get to from the UK and a good holiday destination too.
What a great suggestion, Andrew!
The kit you describe would be very effective operating in remote telescope-mode.
The ODK 16 is a very multipurpose scope and you look to have focussing sorted out: stability of focus is an important factor in remote operation.
Am sure there are several BAA members who would be seriously interested in your proposal – I can’t speak for the Association but would be happy to discuss with you and others offline.
Clear skies,
Richard Miles
The previous evening to the Xanthippe event was nice and clear so I did a practice run doing things like finding the star and taking a picture of the field on the screen using my iPhone so I knew exactly which star was which. I also found out that the OccuRec software for recording the video was playing up and so I sort of found a way around that issue well ahead of time. Am still on a learning curve as to how to set up to avoid disappointment but hopefully we’ll have many more similar opportunities to go after in the future. But a practice run beforehand is a great idea.
(P.S. For the Titan/28 Sgr occultation in 1989, we were able to do a dry-run at the same clock time as the real event the next day – it made all the difference then too!)
Exoplanets are the new Holy Grail for the professional community, so the BAA has now taken the subject on board. In 2017 ARPS had two meetings on Exoplanets in conjunction with the VSS. 2019 should see a lot of new stuff – Expect an ARPS meeting that year. And in 2020, Exoplanets will be the subject of attention at the Saturday afternoon session of the Winchester Weekend meet.
Gary,
Not sure if you are registered with your own members’ webpage. It would be good to have it posted on the Members’ Pages.
Cheers, Richard
Yes, Gary – our witnessing a dwarf nova becoming a classical nova is unprecedented. And I see Robin’s spectrum shown on the ARAS Spectroscopy Forum:
http://www.spectro-aras.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2015
was of particularly high quality (given plenty of photons from a 6th magnitude source) and managed to report ahead of the professionals. Robin’s contribution was duly acknowledged by Wagner et al. in ATEL #11588:
http://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=11588
My request is – Can someone put a short news note out on the BAA frontpage so as to alert the membership, etc.?
Richard
Ian – I see the manual states:
Using the included NexRemote software you can control your NexStar telescope with a computer via the RS-232 port located on the computerized hand control and using the RS-232 cable . For information about using NexRemote to control your telescope, refer to the help files located on the disk. In addition to NexRemote, the telescope can be controlled using other popular astronomy software programs.
And Megastar is compatible with the following scopes:
- Meade LX2000, AstroPhysics GTO, Celestron NexStar 5/8/GT/GPS, Sky Commander, NGC-MAX, Sky Wizard, Sky Vector, Advanced AstroMaster, BBox, MicroGuider III, Mel Bartels and RXDesign ServoCAT.
So it should definitely work. Make sure you use the correct driver for the scope and it looks like it all works via ASCOM.
Unfortunately another of his remarks adapted from Wikipedia says:
On appointment as Astronomer Royal, Woolley reiterated his long-held view that “space travel is utter bilge”. Speaking to Time magazine in 1956, Woolley noted:
“It’s utter bilge. I don’t think anybody will ever put up enough money to do such a thing . . . What good would it do us? If we spent the same amount of money on preparing first-class astronomical equipment we would learn much more about the universe . . . It is all rather rot”.
Woolley’s protestations came just one year prior to the launch of Sputnik 1.
So the proverbial pinch of salt needs to be invoked when it comes to taking certain of his comments seriously.
Thanks Denis for keeping us informed on this naming. I had a distant memory that several other names had been considered for Eros (1898 DQ), the first near-Earth asteroid discovered. Eros remained quite a special object up until Pluto was found, in that only three other NEAs were discovered during the intervening 32 years, one of which (719 Albert) was subsequently lost for all of that time.
Thanks Tim for highlighting these.
Of course ‘Britastra’ is named for the BAA and so it would be especially poetic if the weather cooperated and lots of timing chords were achieved.
Unfortunately am away in France for that event but will hopefully have returned in time for the second one.
I suspect that this could be much larger than depicted on the supplied map and that observers much further afield should try to observe this very bright star disappear momentarily (for up to 2 seconds). Asteroid occultations of ‘naked-eye’ stars visible from the UK are extremely rare and so, if clear, I recommend observers trying for this. Use optical aid, or better still video recording, together with as large an aperture telescope or other optical aid as is convenient. Naturally timing the disappearance and reappearance would be good, and do remember that the asteroid may actually be multiple (we do not know this however) and so watch out for the star to potentially disappear TWICE – you never know.
Andrew – I’ve just sent an e-mail to see if your request can be acted upon.
Presume your preferred name as displayed to members is “Andrew Thomas”.
Best regards,
Richard Miles
Hi Doug – Very pleased to hear that your library group is interested in getting involved in using telescopes on the Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO) network. There is a BAA Robotic Telescope Project that looks to encourage amateurs to pursue observing projects on remote scopes, so if you are seriously interested then there are lots of potential targets (comets and asteroids are usually very fruitful) – in some ways, the main difficulty is in deciding what is a worthwhile target to go after. Ask the Perton folk where their interests lie and let us know. We are currently setting up a small panel under the auspices of the BAA RTP to provide guidance of this kind.
Chat again soon,
Richard Miles
Thanks Nick – Looking at its trajectory, I doubt that it is visible because of a bright outburst, rather it looks that it could have been discovered by an amateur survey in the morning sky when at a solar elongation of about 70 degrees and visible from the southern hemisphere – that would have been during the previous dark lunation, several weeks before its actual discovery by the ASASSN team.
I also see there may be some issue about the poorly chosen acronym, ASASSN, when it comes to the MPC/CBAT ascribing a discoverer’s name to this comet. No name has yet been issued. ATEL #10597 describes this object as Comet ASASSN1, which in my book is incorrect. The survey that discovered it refer to themselves as ASAS-SN so it should be Comet C/2017 O1 (ASAS-SN) – the IAU stoppeda while ago adding numbers following the name.
Nick – Thanks for getting these online so promptly. Much appreciated.
Martin – Great stuff. Having the full story of the Comet Panther near-miss on your part further to what you wrote in your excellent book, “Hunting and Imaging Comets” is very useful. So, thanks for responding. For a second I wondered if I was mistaken in my assertion.
