Thread: 2014 jo25
View Single Post
  #7  
Old 13-04-2017, 09:30 PM
OzEclipse's Avatar
OzEclipse (Joe Cali)
Registered User

OzEclipse is offline
 
Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: Young Hilltops LGA, Australia
Posts: 1,186
It can't be viewed at closest approach on April 19 when it is mag 10.5 except perhaps from far northern Australia and perhaps very very low on the northern horizon from Brisbane.

It can be viewed, as posted by Dennis, on April 20, 21, 22 as it fades from mag 11.5 to 13.5. On these nights, it will be visible highish in the northern sky even from southern Australia. April 20, is the best night for Australia. It doesn’t move much in RA but travels about 1 deg per hr moving south in declination.
Quote:
PDThomas23 wrote :

You can use the Minor Planet Ephemeris Service to generate co-ordinates for your location.
http://minorplanetcenter.net/iau/MPEph/MPEph.html
When these events have occurred before, we have found problems generating ephemerides for some of the close NEO's. This is not a particularly close approach. Nevertheless I recommend you don't trust your planetarium program and generate RA & Dec using the MPEph posted by PDThomas or the NASA horizons program. Go to the NASA Solar systems dynamics page [ https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov ] and follow the HORIZONS link. Both ephemeride generators produce very accurate topocentric ephemerides for NEO's. At the very least, use one of these to cross check your planetarium program.

Then use your scope interface or star hopping to go to that RA & Dec. If using goto, sync the scope to a nearby star before trying to find the asteroid. At 1 deg per hour moving south it won’t take long to locate. Twice the speed of the moon and at rightangles. Mag 11.5 is pretty easy in a 6 inch scope, getting harder as you go down to 5 inches or less. Difficult in a 3 inch.

Joe
Reply With Quote