Friday, June 13, 2008

Day #8

I got perhaps my first pictures of a dim asteroid today. PROMPT took eleven of the twelve pictures I requested of 2008 LG2 (or at least of the location where I thought it should be). I was disappointed to find out that, after loading the pictures into PinPoint, it would only blink two of them. However, in these two pictures, which were taken five minutes apart from one another, I can make out a faint grey dash that seems to move across the frame. This grey dash is present in the other pictures as well but, for whatever reason, PinPoint won't read them. I'm fairly certain what I have are pictures containing a faint asteroid, however. I told PROMPT to take more pictures of this asteroid just from one set of starting coordinates. I'm hoping this will enable me to make out more of the asteroid's (or what I think to be the asteroid) motion. The asteroid made its closest flyby to earth last night, but I'm thinking it should definitely still be visible tonight as well. I also attempted to get some pictures of "quaoar", an asteroid in PROMPT's database taken last night. I got the pictures back, but when I load them into PinPoint, neither the program nor I can detect anything that moves like an asteroid. I'll post two screens of the two pictures PinPoint would read and try to make where I think the 2008 LG2 is.

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