Image of the Month - February 2016

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Asteroid Watch Project

Picking the image of the month for February has been a little tricky with almost half of the month lost to poor conditions on La Palma - with the telescope covered in ice and unable to open! So we're opting for a series of images taken early in the month and shown in this animated gif. If you look closer near the centre of the field you will see and object moving between the images, against the fairly static background of the stars. This is a Near Earth Object or NEO, these are mostly asteroids and comets whose orbits bring them close to planet Earth. These images were taken as part of our Asteroid Watch project, where you can help astronomers by tracking, and discovering, NEOs and reporting back their coordinates, through the NSO, to the Minor Planet Centre who keep an eye on all of these objects just in case any get a little too close to Earth for comfort! Why not get involved?

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