Can you find elon musk's Tesla sports car moving fast in space in the new video?

The sports car carrying a dummy named "Star Man" was launched on February 6th, and is currently orbiting the sun somewhere between the Earth and Mars (but not towards the asteroid belt as originally announced by Musk).

"Once the shots of cars and interstellar people began to arrive, people doubted whether they could be observed from the earth. Andre wrote on his website DeepSkyColors: "I only think of one thing: find the answer to this question, and if so, try to take a photo-better yet, take a video. ".[In the picture: Space Exploration Technology Company's first Falcon heavy rocket was successfully tested! ]

In order to capture the images of shiny cars flying into space, Andre packed his binoculars and cameras and drove to Montebello Open Space Reserve in California. Andre is a semi-dark place, only a short drive from his home in Sunnyvale.

Using the online ephemeris calculator provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of NASA, the position and time of the sports car in the night sky can be accurately determined. This is another video of a sports car magnified in space, which was taken by the Virtual Telescope Project and the Tenegra Observatory in Arizona on February 8th. (You can find NASA data about sports cars on ssd.jpl.NASA.gov/horizons.cgi by selecting "Target"-143205. )

At the same time, locating a sports car seems to be a relatively simple task for experienced astronomical photographers who use automatic navigation telescopes. Staman really made Andre run around for his money.

The first time he started shooting the video of this sports car was at 2 am on February 9 (GMT 1000), when it was about 500,000 miles (800,000 kilometers) away from the Earth. After installing binoculars and aiming at the coordinates given by NASA ephemeris tool, Andre's image shows no sign of a sports car. ""There's nothing there, "Andre wrote.

Andre spent hours trying to figure out why he couldn't find it before giving up going home. "By 5 am 15, I think that's enough. Dusk was coming, and I wanted to avoid the rush hour when I went home, so I packed my bags and left, "he wrote." "The next night (February 10),

Andre began to try again. But this time, dark clouds blocked the way, and he returned empty-handed. "After a nap, I went back to all my shots, but I found nothing and I was still confused about the whole thing." Then it suddenly occurred to me, "Andre wrote.

"When I created Starduration from JPL's website, I didn't enter my coordinates! In any case, I chose to default, "he added. The default location setting is "geocentric", which is the center of the earth.

Astronomical photographers photographed elon musk's sports car cruising in space (video), because the sports car is quite close to us, and the parallax is obvious, which means that different positions on the earth will "look at the interstellar people at slightly different coordinates". Andre said that I quickly recalculated and obtained new coordinates and turned to my image, thanks to the vast area captured by my telescope. . . Prosperity! Right there! Can't miss it! It was always there, but I didn't notice it! "

Moral of the story: When you track objects in space, you must consider your position on the earth.

Editor's Note: If you have an amazing night sky photo or video and want to share a possible story or photo library with us and our news partners, please contact Tariq Malik, editor-in-chief of spacephotos@space.

Email to hweitering@space or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. An original article about space.