Charon Imaged by Amateur Astronomers

By Nancy Atkinson - October 30, 2008 at 8:45 AM UTC | Planetary Science
charon-reduced.jpg

[/caption]

This past summer, a group of seven amateur astronomers from Italy worked on an observation campaign of Pluto, with hopes of capturing an image of its moon,

Charon

. "Imaging Charon is very difficult and nobody has spotted it with amateur equipment, so far," said Daniele Gasparri, one of the members of the group. The team made several attempts, and finally, one member of the group, Antonello Medugno, took this interesting image. "After many calculations," said Gasparri, "we are sure that this image shows clearly Pluto and Charon, for the first time with amateur equipment." Comparing the image to the graphic which shows the position of Pluto and Charon on the same date, it's obvious, they nailed it! This is quite a feat considering their equipment was an "amateur" 14-inch telescope! Also, as

The Bad Astronomers points out

, Charon wasn't discovered until 1978, and then a 61-inch telescope was used!

Compare their image to one taken by Hubble:

[caption id="attachment_20352" align="alignnone" width="580" caption="Hubble image of Pluto and Charon. Credit: NASA"]

[/caption]

Not bad!!

Gasparri is an astronomy student, and a contributor to the Italian astronomy magazine

Coelum.

With the support of the magazine, he coordinated the effort to image Charon. Medugno used an 14" Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope, a Starlight Xpress SXV-H9 CCD camera and a R-IR passband filter.

The image was processed using the Lucy-Richardson Algorithm of the RAW image, composed of 21 frames of 6 seconds of exposure each, with a focal of 8900mm. "All data confirm the image: the magnitude, separation, and position angle," said Gasparri. Nice work! Check out Gasparri's website of more astronomical images he has taken.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com