This is a composite of 140x15sec exposures of the asteroid 354 Eleonora taken between 00h55m and 01h47m on January 26th UT. The images were taken in 7 groups of 20x15sec each with a DSI mounted at the prime focus of an Orion StarBlast (4.5” f/4) guided by a Meade DS-2130 mount. The source images were stored as FITS, two-star aligned and merged into a single BMP using the Autostar IP software, then level-adjusted just a tad in Photoshop using Eleonora as the white point. At the time Eleonora was located about 2 degrees south of Bellatrix (gamma Orionis) shining at magnitude 10.48 approximately 170 million miles from Earth well out in the asteroid belt. For comparison I’ve marked the brightness of several stars in the field. Prior work with the LPI showed this simple imager could reach about magnitude 12 using 8sec exposures and this image shows the DSI can clearly reach much fainter using similarly short exposures making it relatively easy to image these little worlds even with a small telescope.

-John

I do hope you're sharing these posts with Orion and Meade. They're getting a TON of free publicity from your efforts!

There is a book idea in here ... (See What You Can Do with a Small Telescope?).

Nice work.

jb

Great pictures. Those are the first asteriod pictures I have ever seen taken by someone on this website.