Ceres

Last Saturday night, the 24th February was clear, very clear. However the 68% illuminated moon put a stop to any deep sky imaging work, so I decided to image the asteroid Ceres, this is the second brightest asteroid after Vesta and can be seen easily with binoculars if you know where to look, it is at present in the constellation of cancer above the double star Zubanah. I took a set of 20 second exposures at about 11pm and then waited for around 4 hours before taking another set of exposures, this gap between the two sets of exposures is to allow the movement of the ateroid to be captured.

You can clearly see the movement of the asteroid between the two sets of image captures. It was bitterly cold out and I had to use dew heaters to stop the optics freezing over, but as always I stayed nice and toasty in the warm room of the observatory.