Observations of CHIRON by Denis Bergeron, Val-des-bois, Quebec, Canada (E-MAIL: bergeron@achilles.net) Coordinates of my site: LONGITUDE: 75¡ 36' 54 '' WEST LATITUDE: +45¡ 53' 41'' NORTH ALTITUDE: Around 550 feets Night of January 29th, 1996 Hello dear friend astronomer, This is my first report of observation about CHIRON in 1996. My astronomical equipment is a Meade SCT LX-200 10'' F10 telescope with a telecompressor lens to reduce my f/ratio to about F5.0 (FL: 51,6 inches) and a SBIG ST-6 CCD camera at prime focus. I also use a CCD SBIG ST-4 at prime focus of my piggyback SCT telescope 4" F10 to autoguide my Meade. All CCD pictures were exposed 5 minutes each. I had taken 31 exposures during this session. My first exposure was taken on January 29th 1996 at 07h09 UT and my last one on January 29th at 10h30 UT. No filter was used. The seeing was good. During this observation session, I have taken 4 dark frames of 5 minutes. In the end, I took a flat field image. The following days, I averaged my dark frames and I calibrated (dark subtract and FF corrected) all my pictures. With my software, I add up 31 images centered on CHIRON to show CHIRON alone (see CHIRON.JPG). I haven't detected any evidence of COMA around CHIRON. I did ASTROMETRIC measurements on Chiron with ASTROMETRICA software and here are my results: Observations by Denis Bergeron. MEADE SCT 10" F5.0 LX-200 + CCD, GSC reference stars (J2000.0). CHIRON C1996 01 29.29991 12 48 53.51 -08 06 57.2 16.4 V 819 CHIRON C1996 01 29.33839 12 48 53.51 -08 06 57.1 16.5 V 819 CHIRON C1996 01 29.37525 12 48 53.48 -08 06 57.0 16.4 V 819 CHIRON C1996 01 29.41215 12 48 53.44 -08 06 56.7 16.4 V 819 CHIRON C1996 01 29.44441 12 48 53.42 -08 06 57.0 16.6 V 819 I use Chiron's ephemerides supplied by CPC. They are very precise. If you wish to find Chiron easily, use software with the GUIDE STAR CATALOG such MEGASTAR, THE SKY or others. Plot the position of Chiron on the chart and try to identify stars in the area where Chiron is. Be patient! Don't expose your images more than 10 minutes. I detect a slight shift in my images. It's best to take many 5mn images and add them up to increase the S/N. Be careful to don't saturate the pixels. If you have images of Chiron, please prepare the best ones and send a copy of them to CPC and to Patrick Vanouplines's home page in Belgium. I'm very interested to look at them. See my others reports Best regards