The planet Pluto

The ninth planet from the sun. Discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930. Pluto is about 35.6 au from earth, has a mean radius of about 3000 km, and had a magnitude of about 13.9 when these images were taken.

Images taken with TEC-140 Telescope mounted on Losmandy G11 mount. Camera used was a Canon EOS20D used at prime focus.

Five 1 minute exposures dark, flat, and bias compensated, aligned and stacked, background removed and Digitaly Developed in ImagesPlus 2.75 beta 2. This was done for the two different days and then the resulting stacks were aligned and used as a 2 frame animated GIF. You can see Pluto "blinking" in two positions in the center of the frame. The June 2005, Sky and Telescope gives some finder chars for Pluto. It was in the constellation Ophiuchus when these imates were taken.