News from the observatory of the January 29th 2010:

626 Notburga

In the night of 2010 Jan 27 was observed the 7th positive occultation. (626) Notburga occulted 2UCAC 46562578. 5mins and 12sec before the predicted event a first luminosity drop was detected. It’s origin is uncertain.

January 15th 2010

The 13.3mag asteroid (442) Eichsfeldia occulted a 12.7mag star for about 4.8s in the night of Jan 14th 2010.

January 12th 2010.

The asteroid 2010AL30 captured thru clouds in the evening of Jan 11th 2010. (45 images of 14s each. Luminosity: 17.3magR).

December 8th 2009.

The asteroid (52) Europa occulted a 10mag star in the night of December 4th.

July 17th 2009.

Iridium 33 DEB flashes captured.

May 16th 2009.

Three unusual flashes were detected during the moon surface patrol of april 30th..

March 18th 2009.

The asteroid 2009FH captured when it was at a distance of 320’000km. See also this page from NASA-JPL.

March 4th 2009.

An animation of comet C/2007N3 (Lulin) spanning more than 6h.

February 24th 2009.

Another animation of comet C/2007N3 (Lulin) spanning about 5h.

February 18th 2009.

This animation of the comet C/2007N3 (Lulin) spans about 1h and one can see the movement of the ion tail. See also this picture.

October 6th 2008.

The roughly 3m size object 2008TC3 crossing the sky of the observatory imaged in this movie.

January 30th 2008.

The 250m Potentially Hazardous Asteroid 2007TU24 passed above the european nightsky. The January 28th its distance to the earth was 720’000km. The day after its distance was 630’000km. Its speed was 9,5km/s relative to the observer. I build up a first and a second animation of this near encounter.

January 1st 2008.

10 years of minor planet observing : 1998-2008. The total number of  the discovered numbered minor planets at Gnosca is 109. 69th rank worldwide.

November 14th 2007.

A 21mag positive detection of the optical counterpart of GRB071112C was done 4hours and 10mins after the BAT detection. Using FORS2 the VLT measured a redshift of z=0.823

October 27th 2007.

A composite image of the expanding dust of 17P Holmes.

October 25th 2007.

The outburts of the comet 17P/Holmes photographed between the clouds. With an angular diameter of 2,5arcmin it is roughly 4 times larger than the angular diameter of Jupiter. Now the comet is a naked eye object in the Perseus constellation.

May 8th 2007.

Mr. Kazutami Namikoshi, director of the Japan Shiatsu College, and his wife Kyoko were visiting the Gnosca Observatory. The minor planet 61385 Namikoshi was discovered in Gnosca and was dedicated to the memory of Tokujiro Namikoshi (1905-2000) who was the founder of the worldknown Namikoshi Shiatsu therapy.

January 30th 2007.

Since 2002 ten positive optical GRB counterparts were detected. This time was the turn of GRB070125.

January 2nd 2007.

The GRB060218 was captured from Gnosca the 2006 27th february and again the 2006 december 10th.

December 29th 2006.

The PHA asteroid 2006XG1 was imaged from Gnosca, just in the discovery day (Dec 11th) and about 2 weeks after (Dec. 28th). See also this link to see the positional measurements.

October 26th 2006.

The WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) satellite was imaged from Gnosca in the night of october 26th near the antisolar point.

See also this site: http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/

September 21st 2006.

The transit of HD209458b.

September 20th 2006.

The occultation of the double star TYC 1879-02151-1 by the asteroid (144) Vibilia was positive. Its duration was 5.1s. This was the 4th positive occultation recorded here in Gnosca.

August 1st 2006.

The asteroid (47164)Ticino, previously designed as 1999TX13, is now circling in the sky around the sun. The asteroid Ticino was discovered at Gnosca in 1999.

May 26th 2006.

At 16:28:30 UT, the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) triggered and located GRB 060526.

Observations at Gnosca begun at 20:50UT, may 26th, about 4.5h later the Swift BAT trigger, under fair sky conditions. Imaging lasted until 23:40UT. As a result a first stacked R-filtered image centred at 21:14UT  shows the OT at 18.8mag with SNR=9. (USNO A2.0 catalog). A second stacked R-filtered image centred at 23:20 UT shows the OT at the same magnitude and same SNR. The measured coordinates of the OT were: RA:15h31m18.34s, decl:+00d17m04.7s (UCAC2 catalog). Observations continued from 20:40UT to 22:30UT, may 27th (about 27h later the Swift BAT trigger), under good sky conditions. A stacked R-filtered image centred at 21:35UT shows the OT at about 21mag with SNR=4. (USNO A2.0 catalog). Observations continued from 21:30UT to 22:50UT, may 29th, under good but windy sky conditions. A stacked unfiltered image centred at 22:10UT don’t show the OT anymore (limiting mag: about 21 at SNR=3).

May 15th 2006

The MACE2006 (Meeting on Asteroids and Comets in Europe) took place in the austrian capital Wien and ended the May 14th with this group photo.

March 25th 2006.

The Minor Planet Center accepted the proposal of the observatory to assign the name of the great theoretical physicist John A. Wheeler to the minor planet N. 31555 discovered the march 7th 1999 at Gnosca. Here the citation:

John Wheeler (b. 1911) is one of the finest theoretical physicists.
From nuclear physics, to quantum theory, to relativity and gravitation,
Wheeler's work has set the trajectory of research for half a century.

March 14th 2006.

The comet C/2006A1 Pojmanski in the morning sky of Gnosca.

February 19th 2006.

Two images show the shift of the north celestial pole between 2000 and 2006. In six years the apparent center of rotation of the stars has moved by about 2 minutes of arc. This is a manifestation of the drift of the earth rotational axis, also known under the name of precession of the equinoxes.

February 10th 2006.

The images on GRB060206 begun only 24h after the detection made by the Swift-BAT satellite. In this image one can see the optical counterpart at about 20mag. A spectra made by the Lick Observatory showed a redshift of z=4.05 for this OT.

February 7th 2006.

This article on Astronomy and Astrophysics describes and awards the photometric work made also at Gnosca on the double minor planets Tama, Berna, Frostia and Debussy.

January 24th 2006.

The night of january 24th at 15:55UT the HETE satellite detected a long gamma sky signal. At 19:47UT I could observe the same sky region with my telescope. A faint optical signal very near an annoying 15mag star was to see. The day after I photographed the sky region anew: apparently the signal faded beyond my detection threshold. Here one can see an animation of the two pictures (of the january 24th and 25th).

These two images show the detection of the GRB060124 (the two white lines show the position of the optical counterpart of the GRB). The blue dots in the graph refer to the intensity of both stars in the picture of the january 24th. The red dots refer at the image of january 25th. From both curves one can see that the optical counterpart had faded.

January 21st 2006.

In the first hours of January 21st the asteroid 2006BA was traveling at about 750’000km from the Earth. It was quite rapid and it was heading in the south direction. Its brightness was around the 17mag. That night only the friend Peter Birtwhistle of the Great Shefford Observatory (obs code J95) and I from Gnosca (obs code 143) were observing 2006BA. Curiously Peter was shooting CCD pictures exactly at the same moment as I did.

Here the positional astrometry of two contemporary observations(to the tenth of a second):

K06B00A  C2006 01 21.01788207 28 30.93 +00 56 21.5         16.8 R     J95

K06B00A  C2006 01 21.01788307 28 16.00 +00 58 00.6         16.7 R     143

In the left image I show these two positions. The Great Shefford Observatory (J95) is located in Great Britain and is at the North-West from Gnosca (143): therefore the position of the asteroid is more South-East from the position of Gnosca. Between these two positions I could measure about 4arcminutes, i.e. about 1/8 of the Moon angular diameter. In the right image one can see the original picture of 2006BA taken from Gnosca.

Some hours later 2006BA was transiting at 500’000km from the earth orbit. This object is not classified as PHA(Potentially Hazardous Asteroid) because it has a too small estimated diameter (roughly 15m). The positional measurements from Gnosca were the last. No one additional observatory photographed 2006BA. All positions (50 in total, spanning a duration of 3 days) are here.

January 8th 2006.

The satellite Giove-A, the pioneer of the european fleet of GPS satellite system, was captured above Gnosca the january 8th 2006. The bottom image shows the faint trace of the satellite transiting at a distance of 23’000km.

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