Astrometrica | A Science Lesson

Over the last few weeks I have been staying with my friend Tomas (also ETD rubbishcorp®). Occassionaly when I’d get back from the office Tomas would be sat staring at a flickering image like this:

The image is from a software called Astrometrica, which is an interactive software tool for scientific grade astrometric data reduction of CCD images. According to Tomas the stars in the image are down to 21 magnitude (which is about 1 million times fainter than what you can see with unaided eye on the best night far away from light pollution). What Tomas does is stare at the flickering image (which is essentially a time lapse of a portion of the sky) looking for movement. Any movement he sees means that me may have found a new planet, star or asteroid. For example the circled object is a previously unknown minor planer (asteroid).

The following is the measured astrometry from that asteroid:

TOV03Z *IC2010 06 10.26021 16 58 33.15 -19 10 13.8 H21
TOV03Z IC2010 06 10.26478 16 58 32.93 -19 10 13.7 H21
TOV03Z KC2010 06 10.26943 16 58 32.66 -19 10 13.7 19.5 V H21

TOV03Z is the temporary designation, I and K are flags that described conditions under which the measurement was made (I = Involved with a star, K = stacked image), 2010 06 10.26021 is the date and time (.26021 is a fraction of day corresponding to 6 hours 14 minutes and 42.14 seconds), 16 58 33.15 is the Right Ascension and -19 10 13.8 is the declination, 19.5 V is the apparent magnitude and H21 is the code of the observatory at which the data was taken.

Tomas does this as a part of the International Astronomical Search Collaboration (IASC) program and has been known to have found a few stars which he can name then as a result – obviously rubbishcorp® is a very pretty name for a star.

Thank you Tomas for putting me up and teaching me a little about the sky.

Tomas’ site is here.

His first minor numbered planet here.