(228) Agathe
About this celestial object
(228) Agathe is an inner main-belt asteroid. Its motion creates the short trail near Alcyone in the M45 image of 26 September 2026. The listed coordinates and predicted magnitude refer to that observation.
The identification matches the solved image against SkyBoT ephemerides from the Paris Observatory. At 02:20:20 UTC on 26 September 2026, the predicted position is about two arcseconds from the measured trail centre; the predicted direction and length also match.
Between the first exposure at 00:20:40 UTC and the last at 04:20:01 UTC, Agathe moves about 44 arcseconds, or 27 pixels in the published image. Aligning the exposures on the stars turns the moving asteroid into a short trail.
The geocentric J2000 position at the reference time is RA 03h 47m 38.1319s, Dec +24° 14′ 04.890″. Its predicted visual magnitude is 15.2 and its distance is 1.109 AU, approximately 166 million kilometres. These are observation-specific values, not its current position.
FITS DATE-OBS timestamps are interpreted as UTC; TIMESYS is absent. The label marks the trail centre only for this observation. Source: https://ssp.imcce.fr/webservices/skybot/
Image and observation
Catalogue: (228) Agathe
Capture date: 2026-09-26
Total exposure: 10430 s
Imaging and processing: Ulrich Schwarz · Vespera Pro