Where is Asteroid 10381 MalinSmith ?

Konrad Malin-Smith a life member of The Croydon Astronomical Society has had asteroid 10381 MalinSmith named after him. This page allows you to generate an ephemeris to allow you to point your telescope in the right place to image it. A small prize is offered to the first member to produce two images showing the motion of this asteroid and also provide supporting evidence to prove that the asteroid observed is Malinsmith. This evidence is to be presented to the members of the society in the form of a short talk at one of our meetings.

Good Luck

John Murrell

Update 12th May 2007

MalinSmith is now on the opposite side of the Sun and will not be visible till the Autumn. The asteroid will not be as bright next winter as it is moving away from the Earth - this makes imaging it more of a challenge. - Remember 5 magnitudes dimmer is 100 times the exposure ! The link below will allow you to see where MalinSmith is relative to the Earth and generate an ephemeris with the position & magnitude for the next month.

Update 25th November 2006

As the Earth moves away from MalinSmith the asteroid is beginning  fade quite rapidly - will the prize be safe till the next opposition in January 2008 ??

Update 24th September 2006

As forecast Asteroid 10381 Malin Smith is now approaching it's closest to Earth which occurs around the end of October. Over the next few weeks the asteroid will be rising earlier so you will not need to get up after midnight to image it. An animation of the orbit is here. The asteroid shuld be around 16 to 17th magnitude so should be easy to image.

Update 4th February 2006

10381 Malin Smith is currently in Sagittarius so rises at about the same time as the Sun so will not be visible. In June the asteroid has moved to Pisces but is unlikely to be visible in the mid summer sky as it is too bright. The hunting season begins around the middle of July as MalinSmith climbs higher in Pisces when it will be Magnitude 17.1. In early September MalinSmith has brightened to Mag 16 and is higher in the sky so should be a better target. On the 17th October the asteroid crosses the boundary into Pegasus fairly close to Algenib (Gamma Peg.) but has started to fade now mag 16.2.

Update 10th July 2005

If you wish to visualise where the elusive asteroid 10381 Malinsmith is have a look at the following link ( you will need java loaded on your computer) http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/db_shm?sstr=10381&group=all this will allow you to see where MalinSmith is relative to the Earth and the Sun and you can change the date to see when it has a close approach and may be easier to image. The only thing this does not show you is how high in the sky it is - the dates of close approach can be entered into the form below to find out it's declination.

An alternative way to locate it is to put the elements into a planetarium programme and use this to show the position. Alternatively you can just plot it on a good sky atlas.

It should be an easy target around September 2006 when it reaches it's closest position to the Earth this orbit - around Mag 15 & high in the sky in Pisces with a declination of around +14 deg.

Can anyone image it before than ??

Calculator below courtesy of The Minor Planet Centre who carry out the calculations.

Other observers also have their own follow-up pages, check out this list of links.

A PDF document describing the use of the MPES is available.

Information on any known problems with this service is available.

 

 

 

Astrometric observations of any of the following objects should be sent directly to mpc@cfa.harvard.edu. Updated orbits will be available automatically through this page.

 

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The following objects are available:

 

 

 

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none MPC 1-line MPC 8-line
SkyMap (SkyMap Software) Guide (Project Pluto) xephem (E. Downey)
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Show residuals blocks. Show only residual lines containing observations from code . If you select 8-line MPC format the elements will be displayed with the ephemerides. If you select any format other than 8-line MPC format, only the elements are returned. In such cases your browser should download the elements file and save it to your local disk.

 

 

 

 

Supplementary Information

 

Summary
The summary lists the current J2000.0 coordinates, visual magnitude and solar elongation of the selected minor planets, as well as information on the date of last observation (where available), forthcoming opposition data and details on the latest published orbit. The opposition data lists the date of the next opposition and the declination and visual magnitude at that time.

 

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The list of available formats for the orbital elements was correct at the time this document was prepared. It is possible that the Minor Planet Center now supports further formats. If you select the summary option, any newly supported formats will be listed.

 

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Ephemerides
The ephemerides supplied for minor planets and comets are perturbed (if the orbits were computed with perturbations) and can be generated over the time period 1900 to 2040. Objects with unperturbed orbit solutions will return unperturbed ephemerides. Objects must be identified in images by their motion, not by their apparent closeness to a predicted position.

The time-scale of the supplied ephemerides is UTC.

If you desire a topocentric ephemeris, enter your observatory code in the appropriate box. When local circumstances are displayed, the azimuths are reckoned westwards from the south meridian.

As an aide-mémoire, the packed form of the object's designation (as used on the astrometric observation record) is displayed immediately above the ephemeris.

 

This service utilises the Minor Planet Ephemeris Service, courtesy of the IAU's Minor Planet Center. It has been made possible by Process Software Corporation, and their excellent VMS Web server, Purveyor.

The calculations will be performed on the Tamkin Foundation Computing Network.