1 Ceres: The first asteroid

Ceres is one of the four bright asteroids in the Solar system, orbiting around the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. Its diameter (850 km) is so small that even in opposition its disk is only 0.75 as in diameter.

Ceres appears in the sky as a 6 mg star, moving among the background stars with a speed at most 50 as/hour. Its motion is detectable when iamges taken a quarter of an hour apart.

Image taken: Nov 22, 2002.

Size of the images: 27 deg x 40 deg

Camera: Pentax SLR with 35 mm film, Kodak 800, lens: f=50 mm at f/2.8.

Exposure: 10 min, camera piggibacked on an LX200 but no guided.

Image processing: Photoshop Elements.

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Images taken: March 23, 2004

Students: Andrew Piletz, Cori Woods and Anne Pitre

Telescope: Meade 12 in with f/4 focal reducer (f=48in) in the little dome of Kennon Observatory.

Size of the images: 15'x20'

Camera: SBIG ST-7 CCD

Seeing: 6 as.

Exposures: 7x10 sec at medium resolution (2x2 binning), within a total period of 19 minutes. Motion is obvious in this animation.

Image processing: CCDoops + Photoshop 7.0 + Adobe ImageReady.