Exotic Objects
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Annotated movie of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, moving against background stars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIWDThSwohg
This animation shows the JWST's movement against the background stars on 6th Jan 2022 from 8:41am to 09:54am UTC while travelling just under 1 million kilometres away on its journey towards the Sun-Earth L2 point. JWST moved nearly 1000 kms further away from Earth during this observation and also appears to slowly fluctuate in magnitude from 14.0 to 15.8 - this is likely due to varying amounts of sunlight reflecting off its massive aluminised sun shield.
Interestingly the track appears slightly curved which matches the JWST ephemeris from Horizons: https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons/app.html#/
The animation was made using 29 consecutive frames, each a 2 minute luminance exposure, and the colour was added by subsequently taking a separate RGB image of the same region and then overlaying this onto the animation frames.
Plate solving was done using PixInsight and photometric measurements with PlateSolve2.
Image details:
Date: 6th January 2022
Telescope: Homebuilt 12.5" f/4 Serrurier Truss Newtonian
Camera: QSI 683wsg with Lodestar guider
Filters: Astrodon LRGB E-Series Gen 2
Taken from my observatory in Auckland, New Zealand
