This 72-minute time-lapse animation of main belt asteroid (1278) Kenya was captured with an Orion ST-80 telescope and ZWO ASI482MC camera.  The animation consists of 7 images, each a stack of 12 @ 60 seconds. The field of View is approximately 60 x 40 arcminutes. North is up. East is left. Click on the image for a larger version in a separate window.

The night of November 6-7, was a three-target night. First up was a single asteroid (1278) Kenya, which I will cover here. The other two targets will follow in a separate post.  For this session, I continued trial use of my Orion ST-80 telescope for imaging main belt asteroids. 

The seeing for this session was poor with very thin high clouds passing through the field of view. While capturing images, there was noticeable dimming and brightening of the star field. Nevertheless, I was able to capture enough usable imaging data to produce a little over an hour-long time-lapse animation.

The cropped animation below show (1278) Kenya’s actual sky movement alongside a finder chart produced by the Lowell Observatory’s online Asteroid Finder tool.

This cropped portion of the animation shows the immediate field around (1278) Kenya with a finder chart showing its predicted position and movement over a three hour period. The chart was produced with the Lowell Observatory’s online Asteroid Finder tool.  The field of view approximately 30 x 30 arcminutes. North is up. East is left. Click the on image for a larger version in a separate window.

Sky Movement and Magnitude

During this session, (1278) Kenya was moving across the sky against a background of stars in the constellation Cetus. 

As predicted by the Minor Planet Center, (1278) Kenya was moving at 0.67 arcseconds per minute towards 281.1°.

(1278) Kenya’s measured V magnitude was close to the Minor Planet Center’s predicted magnitude as shown in this table:

Asteroid V mag
(measured)
Vmag
(predicted)
(1278) Kenya 13.6 13.4

More About (1278) Kenya

(1278) Kenya is a stony or silicate S-type asteroid. It is 19 km (12 miles) in diameter and moves around the Sun in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. On this evening, (1278) Kenya was 1.08 AU from Earth and 2.04 AU from the Sun.

(1278) Kenya was discovered in 1933 by astronomer Cyril Jackson at Union Observatory in Johannesburg South Africa.

Observation Details
November 7, 2023 03:02:07-04:14:22 UT
Seeing: Poor    Transparency: Poor    Sky Condition: Bortle 7
Location: Edmond, Oklahoma USA

Image Details
72-minute time-lapse animation.
7 images, each a stack of 12 @ 60 seconds (total integration per image 720 seconds/ 12 minutes).
Gain 250
FOV:
1. 61.6 x 38.6 arcmin/1.03° x 0.64° (cropped and resized from original 1.64°x0.92°; 3.08 “/pixel)
2 30.8 x 30.8 arcmin/0.513° x 0.513° (cropped and resized from original 1.64°x0.92°; 3.08 “/pixel)
North up. East left.

Equipment
Telescope: Orion ST-80 (80 mm f/5) + Orion Field Flattener + Baader Fringe Killer Filter
Camera: ZWO ASI482MC
Guide Scope: SVBONY SV165 (30 mm f/4)
Mount: Celestron CGEM

Image Capture & Processing
Capture: SharpCap Pro
Guiding: PHD2
Process: Deep Sky Stacker, GIMP
Astrometry/Photometry: Astrometry.net, ASTAP, Tycho Tracker

NOTE:  January 27, 2024. Post edited and re-formatted.

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