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Direction Guide

Locating the Red Persona involves figuring out where the gravity pull of the Earth's core is in relation ship to the camera view. The Red Persona bends toward the core, rather than coming directly to the camera.

Up is always the north star Polaris. The telescope rotate itself so it becomes aligned with the celestial grid (The green lines in HNSKY). See the telescope picture at http://www.arnierosner.com/are/Mewlon_Slewing_75.jpg for an example. It’s not at 90 degrees, but at an angle. HNSKY and most sky mapping software show the sky as if you were laying on your back. East and west are opposite of what a person looking down on earth would see. If you draw 2 lines between East-West, and North-South, you get the highest point in the sky. Now draw a line between Planet X and the highest point in the sky (magenta line in the picture below). Planet X Red Persona will try to move toward that highest point in the sky.
 
Planet X Red Persona angle can be calculated based on the highest point in the sky and Planet X position at the time the image was taken. The picture below represents the sky on Jan 10, 2003 at the time frame 1 was taken. The length of the white line between magenta and blue is 51 pixels, and the blue line length is 121 pixels. Therefore, Planet X Red persona should be to the left of Planet X White Persona and up by about 39 degrees. Or in navigators/pilots terms, if your 12 O’clock is 0 degree, and your 3 O’clock is 90 degrees, then Planet X should be at 270 + 39 = 309 degrees.

In late November and early December imaging, the camera had reversed the CCD when Steve had telescope guiding errors. Now the images come out of the CCD without the need for mirroring right to left or up to down. For example, Pierre’s Precise Finder shows the sky without mirroring. Since each frame is 23.6 arc minutes wide, or 0.393333 degrees wide. If you slice the sky as a 360 degrees circle into 915 pieces (915 = 360 / 0.393333), each one of these represents a full frame width.
Naji