4 replies to this topic

[rehling]

While the majestic planets are languishing deep in the bad seeing of poor altitude for us in the Northern Hemisphere, the dwarf planets Haumea and Makemake are up at excellent altitude. This week, I've made a few attempts to image them and my main challenge is getting the precise pointing to capture them in-frame. However, I succeeded in photographing Makemake twice, allowing for this blink GIF.

 

The images were captured from my white zone in San Francisco on May 11 and May 14 with a Celestron 9.25" SCT and an ASI-1600mm using 10-second exposures; due to clouds, the second image used only about 15 useful frames vs. 50 for the first one.

 

With luck, I should get Haumea in the same fashion soon. As a very easy mnemonic for whether these objects are in view or not, they are relatively close to Arcturus, for the next few decades, anyway.

 

[kbev]

Nice capture!  I guess this is going to be the next challenge after capturing Pluto a couple of years ago

[rehling]

Yes, it's three magnitudes dimmer than Pluto, but the same idea. Haumea is very similar in magnitude and fairly close in the sky now, by coincidence. It was just by luck that I missed Haumea in my FOV the first night. I should simply take four images offset from the same center and double my chances of success.

 

Going off topic, the Twin Quasar is very similar in brightness to Makemake and Haumea, so I made an evening off of imaging all three and didn't think about changing gear or even camera parameters.

[kbev]

Going off topic, the Twin Quasar is very similar in brightness to Makemake and Haumea, so I made an evening off of imaging all three and didn't think about changing gear or even camera parameters.

I had intended to try the Twin Quasar last year but never got around to it, but since it's at a decent altitude early in the evening I think I'll give it a next weekend along with the other two.

[rehling]

I captured the Twin Quasar with my 6se last summer and resolved the pair with a one-hour set of short exposures. I tried it with the 9.25" and only about 10 minutes exposure, and I captured the pair but did not split them. When/if I get a clear night soon, I'll try for two hours and expect that will do well.