Contains:  Solar system body or event
"Ciao Bellona - 28 Bellona minor planet", 



"Ciao Bellona - 28 Bellona minor planet"

Technical card

Imaging telescopes or lenses: Pentax SMC Super Takumar 200mm F/4

Imaging cameras: Canon, Baader modified Eos M

Mounts: iOptron SkyTracker v2

Software: PixInsight  ·  The GIMP Team The GIMP  ·  Magic Lantern

Accessory: Sirui T04X T-024X

Date: March 15, 2016

Frames: 59

Focal length: 200

Basic astrometry details job: 1080278

Resolution: 620x645


On the 15/16th of March I was imaging Leo's Triplet with a 200mm lens (320mm cropped).
At this time I was not impressed with the results so the data went to a hibernation mode.

Since the current weather went from superb to usual , I searched my image stack again and discovered a strange artifact on the stacked image of Leo's Triplet. It reminded me of my Catalina images. A blink image showed it more clearly. Yes, something was moving here !!

I got curious about the object. One of the astronomy magazines helped me to find a possible candidate. 28 Bellona, a main-belt asteroid of ~125km diameter. Named after a Roman goddess of war by a guy who lived almost 200 years ago.

In realation to the surrounding stars, the moving object has a magnitude of ~10,45

I downloaded the MPC data into Stellarium and compared it with the images. It is most probably Bellona, altough I'm not 100% sure. I'm not a planet guy, I lost my soul to galaxies :-)

The PGC annotated image shows the galaxies around Leo's Triplet. They are plentiful, as usual. The universe is a very generous thing...



  • Final
    "Ciao Bellona - 28 Bellona minor planet", 




"Ciao Bellona - 28 Bellona minor planet",