So here it is.. first image of HD 99109, a ‘Pakistani sitara (star)’.. imaged by a pakistani sitara :D
International Astronomical Union’s Initiative:
NameExoWorlds is a project of International Astronomical Union which provides an opportunity for every country to name an exoplanet and its host star. This has proved to be a wonderful idea to get everyone involved in Astronomy in general and in exoplanets in particular.
HD 99109 Star and its Planet:
HD 99109 star has a planet revolving around it and it was discovered in 2005. Conventionally, the exoplanet is named as HD 99109b. This planet is in the habitable zone which means that it is possible for life to exit there, if all other conditions are met.
The star is located on the eastern side of Leo constellation and is 163 light years away from us. A subgiant and a yellow-orange star of G8 classification, it has an apparent visual magnitude of +9.09. It’s surface temperature is 5310 kelvins.. around 8% cooler than our own Sun’s and it has the same size as of our Sun. The star’s total energy output is 66% of the Sun’s and its mass is 0.9 of our Sun’s mass.
HD 99109b, the planet revolving around its star, has half the mass of planet Jupiter and completes its orbit in 493 days.
This graph was generated by radial velocity method.. see here for details.
Image Acquisition of HD 99109:
These days imaging HD 99109 is not easy. It will rise at 00:39 today, 5th December, 2019 and will take some time to move up the eastern horizon where the atmosphere is not thick enough to allow us to capture the photons coming from it.
Location is further down the East side of Leo constellation
I captured this image on 2 December, 2019 with Celestron C14 telescope and SBIG CCD camera with Astrodon Luminance filter. It was a bit of a struggle to find it but ‘Plate Solving’ technique always helps us. This is a test image of HD 99109.. i will be taking more data in coming weeks.
So enjoy the top image. . i believe this is the first image of a Pakistani Sitara, from Pakistan!