Space to Grow
Asteroid Investigation
Finding the Asteroid
By far the easiest way to find an asteroid in a series of images is to rapidly step through the sequence of images looking for an object that is moving relative to the stars. The stars appear in the same place in each of the images because the telescope is set to move at the same rate as the stars appear to move across the sky. The asteroid, however, is moving much faster and often in a completely different direction. Rapidly comparing a sequence of images in this way is known as "blinking".
- Load the required images.
Important: At this stage you should not resize any images or move them around the screen. Even though they are overlapping at the moment, leave them where they are, as in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Images are loaded. Select Tools » Blink Images.
This will extract all of the objects from each of the images and load a new window. In this case you can resize and move this new window around to make sure you can see the entire image, as in Figure 5.
Figure 5: Files are blinked.In this window that has just popped up, Astrometrica will now rapidly step through each of the images in turn.
You will notice that the stars stay pretty much in the same place but there should be an object (probably quite faint) that moves in a consistent direction as the frames are displayed. This is your asteroid! You should make a mental note of which object it is for later.
Once you have identified your asteroid, select Tools » Stop Blinking to stop the blinking.
Obtaining an accurate position
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