As usual, UK clouds got in the way of the closest pass (1.2 million miles, only 5 times the distance of the moon) of near-Earth asteroid 2003UV11 last night, but on the 27th we had a reasonably clear sky and I had a go at catching it.
I took a series of five shots with the 100mm macro, at 20s f/2.8 ISO 1600, on my home-made driven mount. At first I didn't think I'd got it, but in fact, after stacking and spending ages in post-processing and plotting the exact position from JPL's ephemeris I reckon I can see it, just. Here's a tiny crop from the 100mm image, actually at 300%, and I've marked the asteroid's position.
It was supposed to be mag 12.6, but the star just to the right and below my markings is 12.3 and the one just next to the first (lowest) position of the asteroid is 14.3, so I reckon the asteroid must have been at least one whole mag dimmer than predicted. Was it really worth the effort? Ha ha.
Another point of interest is that I also captured NGC 772, which is a huge galaxy just over 100 million light years away, so I've covered the celestial extremes in one tiny crop here. I must at least deserve points for trying?
