Solar System Objects
17 Thetis (Asteroid)
Asteroid 17 Thetis photographed by Pete Lawrence: a 90 km stony asteroid in the inner main belt that orbits the Sun every 1,419 days.
Target details
17 Thetis is a stony asteroid around 90 km across, orbiting in the inner part of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Its path takes it between 2.1 and 2.8 AU from the Sun, and one lap takes 1,419 days – just under four years. The orbit is only slightly stretched (an eccentricity of 0.13) and tilted about 6° to the plane of the planets. Even an object this size shows up as a faint point of light; what gives an asteroid away is that it slowly moves against the background stars.
Capture details
Data captured 04 May, 2019.
75x 3 minute exposures with Luminance filter.
Images captured between 11pm & 3.30am.
Total Exposure = 3.75 hours.
Equipment details
Skywatcher Quattro 200 CF
NEQ6 Pro
Atik 428EX Mono
Skywatcher ST-80
QHY5L-II
Processing details
This image was processed in Pixinsight & PIP.
Calibration in Pixinsight using Batch PreProcessing.
STF & Histogram Transformation - To Apply an AutoSTF.
Dynamic Crop - To remove black edges & integration artifacts. (Each Channel)
All images saved as JPEG and imported into PIPP.
Gamma set to 0.8.
Enabled Horizontal & Vertical Flip.
Framerate set to 15fps.
Exported as full resolution AVI & GIF, image on this website is GIF resized to 500px wide. The AVI is much smoother but unfortunately my website doesn't currently support videos.
Quick facts
- What is 17 Thetis?
- 17 Thetis is a stony asteroid around 90 km across, orbiting in the inner part of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Its path takes it between 2.1 and 2.8 AU from the Sun, and one lap takes 1,419 days – just under four years.
- When was this photo taken?
- 4 May 2019
- How long was the total exposure?
- 3.75 hours
- What equipment was used?
- Skywatcher Quattro 200 CF, NEQ6 Pro, Atik 428EX Mono, Skywatcher ST-80, QHY5L-II
- Where was it taken from?
- Lisburn, Northern Ireland.