Asteroid Apophis

The asteroid (99942) Apophis was within 16,852,369 km of the Earth on 6th March 2021 which was approximately 44 times the distance between the Earth and moon. Apophis is around 370m across and could be seen using a reasonable size telescope although the larger the better. It will return in April 2029 and be as close as 31,000 km of the Earth.

I decided to try and get some images with my 1624mm focal length 203mm mirror Ritchey-Chretien RC8 telescope. For an object of this size I would need to be lucky with this telescope as it would be very faint. Add to that the fact that I have never tracked and imaged an asteroid before I rated my chances of success as very low. To add to the challenge and increase the chance of failure I had begun to use N.I.N.A. the week before and was still learning how to operate the new software.

For those club members who are interested in reading more details and rather than repeating the details here I decided to provide a link to my private web page. For more details and the animated GIF file please follow this link https://fotolearner.eu/asteroid-apophis. I hope that you enjoy the story.