Bernd Brinkmann´s

Animation of Minor Planet

1999 KW 4

This is an animation of minor planet 1999 KW 4 as it passed close to earth in the night form 25th to 26th of May 2001. It was produced as follows:

441 x 5 sec integrations with 8 sec intervals between them
start at 23:02:45 UT on 25th, end at 01:04:32 UT on 26th of May 2001
Celestron 8 with telecompressor @ f/5.6 with Starlight SX CCD camera with modified DOS software for serial imaging
processing with MIRA A/P:
- read ASCII image (was converted by own program from original binary SX-format)
- dark subtract
- clipping of edges
- scale to 1/2 size to reduce file size
- registration on minor planet
- clipping to final size
- write TIF images
batch-convert to GIF-files with adjustment of brightness, contrast and gamma strech in one step with IrfanView32
producing of the animated GIF-file with GIF Construction Set Professional

The guiding was done manually with the slow motion controls of the Tuthill drive corrector of my Celestron 8 on screen. Therefor I fixed a pice of adhesive paper on the computer screen and pressed the buttons of the drive corrector in the 8 sec intervals after each second or third image to hold the fast moving minor planet near one corner of the paper.

It's a pity that there are so few stars in the vicinity of the minor planets path.

Animation of MP 1999 KW 4

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any comments to:	Bernd.Brinkmann@FH-BOCHUM.DE

last update:	27.05.2001