Thursday, January 1, 2009

Transneptunian Object 2004 XA192

Happy New Year and welcome to our first post of 2009!!!


The MPEC 2008-Y74 issued on 2008 Dec. 30, reports new observations of 2 Transneptunian Objects:

2004 XA192 and 2006 UO321

2004 XA192 has a period of 321 years and at present it's located at roughly 36 AU from the Sun. The MPEC reports a magnitude for this object around 19 on 22 December 2008, a relatively bright value for a TNO and within reach of amateur telescopes.

We imaged this object on 31 December 2008 and on 01 January 2009 to show its slow motion on the background stars. Below you can see the animation composed of 2 stacks of 30X120 seconds each, taken remotely from from Mayhill (NM) through a 0.25 f/3.4 reflector + CCD. We measured 2004 XA192 at magnitude 20.1R while the limiting magnitude of these images is around 21R:



2004 XA192 is the faint object just above the bright star in the centre of the image (see below for a zoom of the animation):



by Ernesto Guido & Giovanni Sostero

References:

- The Solar System Beyond Neptune (The University of Arizona Press - 2008)

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