Huser Astro Gallery - Everything Else


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Comet 17P-Holmes was on Nov 1 in Perseus. The comet was unexpectedly bright. Usually its brightness is around mag 14 when it shows up every 7 years. This time and also over hundred years ago, its brightness jumped a million fold to mag 3.













Nemausa is a large main-belt asteroid (or medium sized minor-planet), about 100 miles across and orbiting our Sun in 3.5 years. Two images were taken 80 minutes apart and superimposed (overlaid). The composite was inverted. Direction and speed can be obtained, here about 1 arc-min per clock-hour. This is another way of finding asteroids; Daphne was confirmed by comparing the image with a star chart





Barnard's Star (second closest one to Earth) moves at 370,000 mph relative to us! In the year 10,000 it will be the closest one at 4 l-y distance (now it is 6 l-y) before receding. From Earth’s view it moves 10.2 arc-secs per year against the stars. The composite image shows its movement over 58 years. The star is in Cygnus.











Comet 103P Hartley-2 near eta-Persei (025042+555344) on 10/10/10 is 1 ml across and mag 7-8 (diffuse). We stacked 11 images of 5 sec exposure.










Comet Hartley2 is 1 ml across and only 20 million ml (0.2 AU) away tonight, 10/10/10. Next week it will be in perihelion at 0.1 AU. Its orbit around the Sun takes 6 years. The two exposures are 40 min 59.4 sec apart.











Five 5 min apart and one 2min of 103P-Hartley2, combined by MarkO with PS. 10/10/10










 SS Cygni, a Dwarf Nova, just brightened to mag 8.5. Compare with the AASVO chart and estimate its brightness on that night.. Brightnesses of some neighboring stars are given in “mag x 10”. More can be found under the <LESSONS> section in the PDF tittled “SS Cygni on 8/25/2011”.