Fifteen Seconds Worth Of Flying Rock

This is an image of the asteroid 2012 DA14 which is a half-football-pitch sized rock which passed by Earth last night at a distance of 27000kms or so.

I captured it is passing through the constellation of Ursa Major, near the junction of the pan and the handle.

The first exposure is 15 seconds, so 75 odd miles worth of travel and the second 260seconds, so 1300 odd miles. The trails are faint but it is roughly the equivalent of viewing Ayers rock from the Moon, so not easy to see.

The asteroid's path is circled:




100% crop, the faint path is in the centre of the image approaching the pan handle between stars Alioth (left) and Megrez (right):





A longer exposure, the box is the area of the 100% crop, the trail to the left is a satellite:




100% crop, trail easier to identify in centre image:




I could have gone for a closer view and a clearer trail but I preferred to image it against a recognisable piece of sky for a bit of context as at the end of the day it's just a line and some blobs.

Spent most of last night waiting, binoculars in hand, for a break in the clouds... two increasingly grumpy teens in tow. Without success

So great to see these- it really did happen

It was obviously rather fainter than I even imagined. Which makes these shots even more impressive.

Many thanks for posting. I'll be dragging the two teens round the computer screen later to show them these

It wasn't easy to see at all. This was probably the easiest point in the sky to find it but quite far beyond the closest approach and outside binocular range.

Sorry, but I can't see what I'm supposed to be looking at here. In the last image which of those different coloured and different intensity lines is supposed to be the asteroid?

The faint one in the centre of the image that is longer than the rest, straight not curved and headed in a NNE direction.

All I can see is a bunch of short length arcs of varying colours and intensities all rotating around the same axis ( which is a long way away top right somewhere )

Smeggy, smack in the middle of the last image there is a streak almost at 90 degrees to the arcing star trails. If you can't see it, turn the brightness up on your monitor.

I can see it. It's very faint but that's to be expected as it (fortunately!) didn't enter the atmosphere!

But if it had Just think of the spectacular shots for the prepared photographer

Ahhh yes turned the brightness up and I can see it now.

My gamma is correct, it's probably these CRTs can can't resolve darks as well as those new fangled flat screens

I can see a DOG driving a Spaceship!

-

Aye...they probably thought the same in Russia until all that glass 'shrapnel' started flying around

The Doc' captured some impressive images there. I stood outside in the London area (waiting for the 'clear sky' some dozy bugger on the radio promised us earlier in the day) with a pair of 20x80s (binoculars that is) a 500 lens tacked onto the K30 and a print out of the rock's route/time scale to hand. Zip,zilch and zero...even the moonlight eventually gave up trying to penetrate such effective cloud cover.

Didn't wanna see the damned silly thing anyway!