Hi, John, List,
Richard got to the hot pixel answer before me (naturally),
but some clues are the the absolute fixity of their positions,
their unchanging brightness, and the fact that they are
scattered all over the frame. If they were "real" objects
and true "companions," they would be of low mass compared
with 2011MD. They would be in orbit around 2011MD. In
nearly five hours motions would be apparent. And... they
would be much closer.
Asteroidal masses do not have companions; they have
"moons." There are at least 180 asteroids with "moons"
that are known and probably many thousands more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_planet_moon
Sterling K. Webb
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Hendry" <p...@pict.co.uk>
To: "Richard Kowalski" <damoc...@yahoo.com>; "meteorite list"
<meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2011 10:04 AM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] 2011 MD Animation
I'm counting what appear to be 17 fainter companion objects in parallel
trajectories. Is that what I'm looking at or is it some sort of video
artefact? If they are companions can their size be determined
approximately from the relative brightness or by some other means?
Thanks,
John
On 28/06/2011 01:24, "Richard Kowalski" <damoc...@yahoo.com> wrote:
I got a few positional images of this object with our 1.5-m (60") on
Mt.
Lemmon last night, but Jure Skvarc at the Crni Vrh Observatory in
Slovenia obtained one of the nicer time lapse animations of the
asteroids
motion against the background stars.
He writes on his Youtube page:
"The images for this animation were taken using a 60-cm telescope from
the Crni Vrh Observatory on the night of 26 July 2011. Each exposure
was of 15 seconds. The telescope was tracking on the asteroid,
changing
the rate of tracking between exposures. The entire sequence lasted
about 4h40m, during which 635 exposures were made. At the time the
asteroid was less than 200000 km from Earth. At the closest approach
some 15 hours later the distance was about 20000 km."
4 hours, 40 minutes of imaging the NEO until his dawn, compressed down
to
43 seconds. Enjoy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-pv18xDWCY
--
Richard Kowalski
Full Moon Photography
IMCA #1081
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