Ceres and Vesta Movement in 24 Hours Animated GIF

I'm so totally pumped! I wanted to create an animation showing the movement of asteroids Ceres and Vesta. I lucked out and got 2 clear nights in a row with Ceres and Vesta in the same frame! I toggled back and forth in Photoshop to create a 2 frame animated GIF of their change in position.

Stack of images from fixed tripod on consecutive nights
ISO 6400, 300mm, f/5.6, 1.3 sec

There they go! Sailing through the night sky! I'm so pleased with how this came out, particularly because it took so much work to make. Each frame is a series of exposures stacked in Deep Sky Stacker (27 frames and 16 frames respectively). The sky was in a slightly different position, so I had to rotate to align the 'fixed' background stars, add arrows and labels, and animate it.

Any apparent movement in background stars is a result of me not aligning the images precisely - although the stars are moving relative to each other ever so slightly, there's no way my camera would detect the tiny movements in 24 hours (or even hundreds of years for that matter).

Ceres and Vesta Super Close Conjunction Flyby July 2014

Update: I was photographing Ceres and Vesta last night (5/18/2014) and noticed that Stellarium was a little off in their position. Heavens Above seems to be right on the money! Looking ahead, it looks like the Ceres/Vesta closest approach will occur around July 4-6.

Screenshot from Heavens Above showing Ceres and Vesta close conjunction

In July 2014, the 2nd largest asteroid Vesta will buzz past the 1st largest asteroid (dwarf planet) Ceres in a super close conjunction flyby. Check out these animated star chart diagrams that show the position of Ceres and Vesta during the conjunction. How close will they be? From our perspective about 2' or 3' (arcminutes) separation on the night of July 13. Don't miss the chance to observe and photograph this extreme asteroid mashup in Virgo.

Both objects should be visible in binoculars, with a small telescope, or with a nice zoom lens and DSLR camera. Vesta will be brighter at +6.4 and Ceres dimmer at +7.7 magnitude.

Here is an animation I made using screenshots from Stellarium to show the position of Vesta relative to Ceres over a period of 38 days.

Vesta and Ceres July 2014 Conjunction - Animation of 38 screenshots from Stellarium

Vesta and Ceres July 2014 Conjunction - Animation of 38 screenshots from Stellarium

To locate the pair of asteroids, look to Virgo and use the conveniently positioned Mars and Spica as pointers! How handy is that!

Spica and Mars point to Ceres and Vesta

Asteroid hunting: Ceres and Vesta

If someone had told me a year ago that I'd be able to see asteroids from my apartment building with an 8 megapixel camera, I would have said "you're crazy!" Currently at magnitude 7.54 and 7.25 respectively, Ceres and Vesta were my best chances for bagging some big rocks near the limit of my camera's (and sky conditions') capacity.

The dwarf planet Ceres is the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt. At nearly 600 miles in diameter, it is the would-be planet that never came to exist thanks to a disruptive gravity tug from Jupiter. Ceres alone comprises nearly 1/3 of the mass of the asteroid belt. 

Vesta, the second largest asteroid, is typically the brightest asteroid. Vesta is over 300 miles in diamater and makes up about 9% of the mass of the asteroid belt. Vesta was recently visited by NASA's Dawn spacecraft. 

Stack of 46 subs, each at 75mm, ISO 1600, f/4.5, 4 sec (cropped)

Stack of 43 subs, each at 75mm, ISO 1600, f/4.5, 4 sec (cropped)

The asteroids are barely visible, but after some tedious work lining up charts in Stellarium and Star Walk, I'm confient that these dots are asteroids and not dim stars. This is also my first sighting of open cluster M35, so I can check that one off my list!

Picture of Asteroid LZ1 from SLOOH SpaceCamera

I grabbed this screenshot of Asteroid LZ1 from the SLOOH SpaceCamera live streaming event going on right now. They are saying the asteroid has the apparent brightness of the dwarf planet Pluto in the sky, and was only discovered a few days ago. The asteroid is the little white dot traveling 10 miles per second, and the lines are star trails.

Cool stuff! I learned about the asteroid from @TravelinMike and the post on Mashable but I figured I would need a membership to see the asteroid. I was pleasantly surprised the show was free, and I'll certainly check back with SLOOH for more of their events.