Observing the Planck spacecraft with the CAHA 2.2m telescope + CAFOS

On the night of the 29th of May 2010, astronomers X. Luri and E. Herrero, with a group of students of the University of Barcelona, used the 2.2m telescope at the Calar Alto observatory to obtain images of ESA's Planck spacecraft, orbiting around the Sun-Earth L2 point at 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. This picture has been composed from these images, showing the movement across the sky of Planck during the night. These results will be used to study the feasibility of on-ground astrometry of the ESA's Gaia spacecraft, needed for the data reduction of this mission.

Right: finding chart & Planck's sky path as predicted by its orbital ephemeris.

Left: the background picture is the composition of three images obtained with the CAFOS instrument. The position of Planck at three observation times is framed with a white box. The blue boxes show an enlargement of these areas: each area was observed twice (30 sec exposures) with two minutes of difference, allowing the composition of the blinking images in the blue boxes.

For more information and access to the animated gif, visit the following web page.

[Published: 03/06/2010]