ARC 3.5m Detects Asteroid 1997 XF11

Six images of the asteroid 1997 XF11 taken on March 11 over an interval of 30 minutes by University of Washington astronomer Bernadette Rodgers, using the 3.5-meter telescope of the Astrophysical Research Consortium located at Apache Point, New Mexico. The observations were conducted remotely from Seattle. The object was approximately one million times too faint to be seen with the naked eye at the time these data were taken. The 17,000 mile motion of this relatively nearby object during the exposures blurs the image with respect to the background stars. The arrow indicates the direction of motion and is 9 arcseconds in length. Image processing and WWW formatting by Eric Deutsch. We appreciate the help of Charles Corson, Mark Hammergren and Bruce Margon in obtaining these observations. (Note to astronomers: images 22 arcseconds north of bright stars are optical artifacts from the dichroic.)

Image available in other formats: GIF without arrow, JPEG with arrow, JPEG without arrow.

Above is an animated GIF image of the movement of the asteroid during the 30 minutes of our exposures. The sky is white, and the black objects are detections of light emitted from stars in our Galaxy. The faint object near the center of the image which is seen to move right to left is a detection of sunlight reflected off the asteroid as it moves in its orbit around the sun. Vertical streaks are defects in the image caused by bright stars. Note that not all browsers are able to properly display animated GIFs.

Individual images used the above animation may also be downloaded via the following links: [Image 0], [Image 1], [Image 2], [Image 3], [Image 4]. Images presented on this page may be used for display, but you must credit The University of Washington and the Astrophysical Research Consortium. You are free to add clickable links to this page in your WWW pages.