[Tinderboxsky (Steve)]

At last, after what seems an eternity of poor weather, two clear nights in a row have allowed my to find the asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres as they approach a close conjunction in Virgo. They are at magnitude 7.2 and 8 now, so are still straight forward targets.

Last night was clear and still and using my Vixen ED103S it was a relatively easy star hop to find the duo using the finder map in Astronomy Australia 2014, page 41. They formed a pretty "Christmas Tree" asterism with 5 other 8-9 mag stars spanning about 1.5 degrees.

Tonight is clear but quite windy, so I set up my smaller 85mm Zeiss spotting scope. The change in positions over the 24 hours was noticeable and the pretty "Christmas Tree asterism is starting to lose its shape.

This was my first sighting of any asteroids/minor planets, so I was quite pleased.

The two are converging over the next two weeks and will be within 10 arc minutes of each other on July 5th.

Cheers

Steve.