Asteroid – 4 Vesta

10.1″ f/4.5, Mallincam DS432cTEC
Exposure = 5 sec, Live Stacked frames = 1, Gain = 17 of 250
August 28, 2022 04:08 UTC

Vesta on this night is about 5 days past opposition and having just past it’s maximum brightness at magnitude 6.0. The brightest star in this image is 41 Aquarii, center-left, at magnitude 5.5; Vesta is the next brightest object towards the top of the frame. It is moving very fast, from this time to 24 hours from now it will have travelled about 14 arcminutes in the 4 o’clock direction, or about a half of a field of view.

Vesta is the second largest asteroid in the asteroid belt, behind Ceres, at 525 km across. It’s size rarely exceeds 0.5 arcseconds so it is not an object that we can see appreciable size with. Image post-processed in Affinity Photo, overlays in Affinity Designer.

North at 1 o’clock, East at 10 o’clock