ASSA publishes an imaging-ready southern observing plan for late 2026
What changed
On 15 September, the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa published its October-to-December CAMNotes. It highlights Comet 161P/Hartley-IRAS near magnitude 9-10 around its 2 October closest approach, useful Moon-free windows for several meteor showers, and two South African asteroid occultations lasting less than one second. It also warns that comet brightness and outbursts remain uncertain.
Why it matters
The bulletin turns a generic event calendar into equipment and cadence requirements. The 21 October occultation of a magnitude 9.3 star is predicted to last 0.34 seconds, while the 30 October event involves a magnitude 12.4 star and a 0.4-second disappearance. Those targets require fast integration, accurate UTC timing and a location-specific path check rather than ordinary long-exposure imaging.
Southern-sky relevance
The predicted 21 October path includes Muldersdrift, Ruimsig and Witpoortjie, with several nearby towns listed. The 30 October path includes Sutherland and Struisbaai. For wider observing, the Orionids have a short dark window before dawn around 21 October, the Taurid maxima fall under dark skies on 5 and 12 November, and the Geminids are favourably moonless on the mornings of 14 and 15 December.
AstroClassifieds tool opportunity
Add a South African event layer shared by What Can I See Tonight, the sky map and Moon & Darkness. Store UTC time, local-time conversion, radiant altitude, Moon interference, predicted path and uncertainty, minimum frame rate or exposure, and a refresh-by date. Occultation cards should clearly direct users to recheck current paths and ephemerides before travelling.
Worth reading
- CAMNotes 2026 No. 4: October to December Astronomical Society of Southern Africa
- ASSA alerts and publication date Astronomical Society of Southern Africa
A new lunar crater validates before-and-after change detection
What changed
NASA reported on 16 September that Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter imagery revealed McGetchin, a roughly 0.2-kilometre crater that formed near the Moon's eastern limb between 11 April and 22 May 2024. Stacked wide-angle maps exposed the change, sharp follow-up images measured the crater, and thermal data found a roughly 6.4-kilometre night-time cold spot around it. Scientists describe it as the largest newly formed crater yet identified in the solar system.
Why it matters
The discovery came from registered before-and-after mosaics followed by human review of many lighting and shadow false alarms. That is a useful model for repeat lunar imaging: normalize illumination, align the surface rather than the frame edge, difference epochs, and retain a review step. The crater itself is too small and limb-compressed to promise as a routine amateur target, so the practical value is the workflow rather than a visual challenge.
Southern-sky relevance
South African observers can build repeat datasets whenever the eastern limb is favourably illuminated and librated. Any locator must account for date-dependent libration, image rotation and optical flips; a fixed north-up map would be misleading for many telescope and camera combinations.
AstroClassifieds tool opportunity
Give planetary processing an optional lunar change mode with surface registration, illumination normalization, before-and-after differencing, false-positive masks and side-by-side review. Record UTC, libration, focal length, pixel scale, filter and seeing, then show whether a named feature is realistically resolved by the submitted setup before suggesting it as a target.
Worth reading
- NASA's Moon Orbiter Spots New, 'Once-in-Century' Moon Crater NASA
- McGetchin crater entry USGS Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature
- Science Advances paper on the McGetchin impact Science Advances
NASA puts human review inside an artifact-classification loop
What changed
NASA launched Artifact InSPECtor, a citizen-science project in which volunteers inspect Euclid spectra and confirm or reject artifact masks proposed by an algorithm. The labels cover false signals caused by stray light, cosmic rays, camera or detector behaviour and electronics. Roman telescope data is expected to join the project in early 2027.
Why it matters
The important change is not simply another AI classifier; it is an inspectable correction loop for uncertain model output. Amateur stacks face a related quality-control problem from cosmic rays, hot pixels, satellite trails, reflections and sensor defects. However, Artifact InSPECtor is designed for slitless space-telescope spectra, so its model and labels cannot be assumed to transfer directly to broadband or narrowband amateur frames.
Southern-sky relevance
The workflow is not location-specific, but it would benefit southern imagers working with sparse reference data by making automated rejection decisions visible and reversible instead of silently discarding unusual signal.
AstroClassifieds tool opportunity
Add an artifact-review stage to imaging workflows: display the proposed mask, confidence and artifact class; let the user accept, reject or edit it; and preserve those decisions in the processing report. Keep source-domain labels explicit so future training data does not mix professional spectra with amateur light frames without validation.