One of the on going projects at SVO are asteroid lightcurves. After
practicing on 1016 Antira, I started a campain to work on the light vcurve of
1484 Postrema, my first real light curve attemp. After gather about 442 usable
images I was able to put together a light curve for Postrema that was good
enough to submit to The Minor Planet
Bulletin.
The process involves gather as many images of the asteroid
as I can over a few nights while its near opposition, performing differential
photometry on the images and plotting the instrumental magnitude of the asteroid
and trying to find a suitable lperoid for the light curve. I use Astronomers Control Panel for my
telescope control. It's very convenient to write an observing run in a text file
and ACP will track the object all night long, taking images via MaximDL, auto reducing them and performing
my meridian flip for my mount. I also use Focusmax to perform
periodic autofocuses throughout the night. I use Canopus
to perform the differential photometry and to figure out the periods of
light curves.
| Date |
Asteroid |
Peroiod and Amplitude |
Notes |
Submitted to MPB |
Plot |
| May 2006 |
1484 Postrema |
Period: 12.1923 hrs +/- 0.0005hrs |
This was my first target that I worked with Canopus for submittal to the Minor Planet Bulletin.. Couple of interesting things about this project was that I found 2 variable check stars using Canopus' Variable Star Search tool (VSS). After getting the RA and DEC of these stars I looked them up on the web and found out they were DV Vir and AR Vir two RR Lyrae type variables. |
Published in The Minor Planet Bulletin. Volume 33, Number 4, (ISSN 1052-8091) | |
| Mar 2006 |
1016 Anitira |
Period: 1.14hrs Amplitude: 0.30m |
This was a practice light curve |
No |
|
| 15 Apr 2007 | 1704 Wachmann | Period: 3.314hrs Amplitude: 0.40m |
Data from 2 session fits a nice period of 3.314hrs 294 data points used. Data from session 2 was a little noisy due to high thin clouds. | Yes, in the next issue of The Minor Planet Bulletin. Volume 35, Number 1, (ISSN 1052-809 | 1704 |
| 21 Apr 2007 | 4105 Tsia | Provisional | Started working on this one the other night. Don't have enough data yet to determine a period. I've only been able to get one nights worth of data due to weather. | 4105 |
