Author Topic: Asteroid named for Hamilton Centre member  (Read 2990 times)

Roger Hill

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Asteroid named for Hamilton Centre member
« on: November 11, 2021, 08:05:51 AM »

Asteroid 10076  = 1989 PK = 1993 QQ has been named Rogerhill.  This is the second asteroid to have a Hamilton Centre connection, with 21336 Andyblanchard being the first.

It was Discovered at Palomar on 1989-08-09 by E. F. Helin.

(10076) Rogerhill

Roger Hill (b. 1955) has been a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Hamilton Centre, for decades and served on the Board for most of that time, including as President. He edited the monthly newsletter Orbit for decades and has been involved with a plethora of outreach activities, including a course for new observers in visual astronomy. [Ref: WGSBN Bull. 1, #11, 6]

10076 is about 6km in diameter, and currently is a 19th magnitude object in Virgo.

https://minorplanetcenter.net/db_search/show_object?object_id=10076
« Last Edit: November 11, 2021, 08:19:32 AM by Roger Hill »

John.Devonshire

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Re: Asteroid named for Hamilton Centre member
« Reply #1 on: November 11, 2021, 06:42:25 PM »
Congratulations Roger!  That is amazing news and well deserved.  I hope Andy doesn't have asteroid envy as his is only 2.3 km across :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meanings_of_minor_planet_names:_21001%E2%80%9322000#336

We are very lucky to have 2 great guys in our club be honoured in this fashion.

Jeff.Booth

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Re: Asteroid named for Hamilton Centre member
« Reply #2 on: November 11, 2021, 08:08:13 PM »
Roger ... I am out-of-this-world giddy with this news ...
Congratulations ... I guess the expression "A chip off the old block" is going to take on a new resonance now, eh?
Now, who will be first to image Asteroid Roger Hill?

Jeff
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Roger Hill

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Re: Asteroid named for Hamilton Centre member
« Reply #3 on: November 13, 2021, 01:47:50 PM »
On the minorplanetcenter.net web site, you can search for asteroids, and it will produce a list of observations, including when and where.  One place in particular, the Zwicky Transient Facility on Mount Palomar, keeps all of its images on-line, and it will let you download them.
 
So, I found a couple of images from this past May.  The problem is that the images are very large, and the stars are incredibly tiny.  I also found some software that will align a pair of images and then rapidly (3 times a second) alternate between two.  Anything that has moved with then show up on one image in one position and not in the other.  This “blinking” procedure is fairly effective, and is a technique used by astronomers for over a century.
 
But I still couldn’t find it.  So, I used Stellarium, a computer based planetarium program and found its position at the time of the exposures (they’re taken 90 seconds apart).  Then I had to match up a rotated, and mirror-imaged, picture until I could get the approximate position.
 
Once I’d found it (which I had to do several times because I kept losing it), I was able to crop the two images from the ZTF ‘scope and create an animated GIF, which I then pushed through some other software to annotate it, resulting in the image here.
 
The image is a portion of the sky 6.76 x 8.72 arc minutes in size. 

Ed.Mizzi

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Re: Asteroid named for Hamilton Centre member
« Reply #4 on: November 14, 2021, 04:42:02 PM »
So amazing and so cool, congrats Roger. I am honoured to know you and to have been a fellow member and Board member of the Hamilton Centre RASC.

Ed

Roger Hill

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Re: Asteroid named for Hamilton Centre member
« Reply #5 on: November 28, 2022, 02:26:02 PM »
And little did you know, 1 year later...




Ed.Mizzi

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Re: Asteroid named for Hamilton Centre member
« Reply #6 on: November 28, 2022, 05:00:34 PM »
Roger, Exactly...little did I know. Wish I could get an image like the one you posted of your asteroid...very cool.

Ed