Lol Steve, I couldn't have put it any better myself.
It's a thick white blanket of cloud here in Brissy & forecast for rain tonight.
Is anyone thinking of going for a long drive out west? Who can forget the comet Lovejoy experience when some people on here (incl. Terry) stood defiant against the permanent cloud bank and out-drove it on Xmas eve. Only took a few hours.
Hi Mark,
It's very easy to see in my 9x50 finder. Looks just like a globular cluster- actually pretty spot on to what NGC362 (near 47Tuc) looks like in the finder- I'd mistaken it last time in the finder for the comet and then compared the two- very close match in size.
I think that Suzy was describing comet Lemmon and you were asking about NEO 2012 DA14.
As it becomes brightest, just before dawn, you'll only just be able to see it in a good quality 8x50 finder. It will rapidly brighten to 9th magnitude during the 30 mins just before twilight.
You need to find brighter reference stars ahead of it's position then wait and catch it in your main optical instrument.
Oh good grief thanks Joe and my apologies with the confusion Mark.
I'm really peeved off that I'm missing the comet meeting with 47Tuc and apparantly that's all that's in my head at the moment when I saw Mark's post. The asteroid wasn't going to happen for me but I thought I still had the other to look forward to. Wall to wall thick blanket of cloud and rain here in Brisbane.
Wishing you all the best & clear skies in seeing this. Errr both events!
Got it! Spectacular! Just been following it in the 16" as it tracks from zeta octants to zeta chameleonis. A little 11th mag speck moving slowly, steadily past the stars. You have to watch for a bit then you notice a little asterism or other has changed shape, then you can follow its progress. Heavens above chart was spot on, found it with that plus SkyAtlas charts. All the more real after the fireball in Russia. Hello DA14...
Wow
That was absolutely incredible. Probably one of the highlights of my 19 years so far in astronomy.
My plan worked 100% and I spotted it as a mag 11.5 slow moving asteroid at about 0020hrs in the 5" Tak. I tracked it for a couple of hours and lost it when I had to flip the OT to the other side of the mount. Luckily it was going to pass close to a fairly bright star about 15min later so I was able to pick it up again. My cries of happiness when I found it again could probably be heard all over the street. I tracked it until about 0400 when it pased behind some trees.
My oldest son Zayne (8yr) came out at about 0130hrs and stayed for the duration. He was really happy to see it and can't wait to tell his teacher on Monday. I also had the 12" dob set up so I showed Zayne a selection of really cool stuff inbetween asteroid watching. He loved Omega Cent, Saturn, and a few open clusters. Tried to show him NGC 5102 but he couldn't spot it (although I was able to). We do live in surburban Perth though!!
It was great to be able to share such an awesome experience with my oldest boy. I hope he remembers it because i'll never forget it.
What a great night
I have to teach a photography workshop for 3 hrs this afternoon so I had to get some sleep last night. I finally got to sleep around midnight and woke to an alarm at 230am prepared to drive an hour NW of Canberra past Yass to avoid the cloud predicted on GFS.
To my surprise, the sky, with the exception of a couple of clouds was clear when I woke. There is a site with a reasonably dark sky 5 mins drive west of my place on the western outskirts of Canberra so I decided to go there. The telescope was already in the car, I grabbed the laptop and cameras and headed out. I spent about 25 mins assembling and polar aligning. Before I even put the tube assemblies on the mounting, thick cloud started to roll in and I could see it was probably hopeless, so I packed up and went home to bed.
It's February, northern Australia is supposed to be clouded out and southern Australia completely clear!
Wow
That was absolutely incredible. Probably one of the highlights of my 19 years so far in astronomy.
My plan worked 100% and I spotted it as a mag 11.5 slow moving asteroid at about 0020hrs in the 5" Tak. I tracked it for a couple of hours and lost it when I had to flip the OT to the other side of the mount. Luckily it was going to pass close to a fairly bright star about 15min later so I was able to pick it up again. My cries of happiness when I found it again could probably be heard all over the street. I tracked it until about 0400 when it pased behind some trees.
My oldest son Zayne (8yr) came out at about 0130hrs and stayed for the duration. He was really happy to see it and can't wait to tell his teacher on Monday. I also had the 12" dob set up so I showed Zayne a selection of really cool stuff inbetween asteroid watching. He loved Omega Cent, Saturn, and a few open clusters. Tried to show him NGC 5102 but he couldn't spot it (although I was able to). We do live in surburban Perth though!!
It was great to be able to share such an awesome experience with my oldest boy. I hope he remembers it because i'll never forget it.
What a great night
Being very new to Astronomy (only 2 months) and barely proficient with my new equipment, I consider my self incredibly fortunate to have had a truly perfect experience last night with 2012DA14. My initial belief was that my 6" Celestron would not be equal to the task, and that I would need a bigger aperture scope and a bit more experience. But, I was astounded that things came out so wonderfully.
I thought it might be useful to describe the equipment I used, and what I was able to (very clearly) observe.
My viewing position was near Mornington, Victoria at the MPAS Briars Observatory. It's quite a good site and reasonably close to most of Melbourne now that Peninsula Link has been completed. People may know this already but... you need to be a member to arrange visits except on public nights (first Fri of each month).
First, I have a Celestron 6SE and use SkySafari for all my observation planning and tracking. Without SkySafari I probably could not have possibly succeeded because it allowed me to see the path of DA14 clearly so I could plan viewing waypoints. After some quick experimentation, I settled on using a combination of a Meade 2X Short-Focus Barlow combined with a Celestron 8-24mm Zoom Eyepiece (which gives every bit as much clarity and FOV as the non-zoom Celestron Plossls). That gave me an easily-accessible eyepiece range of...
from 125X with a 0.5 degree FOV
zoomed to a maximum of 375X with a 0.1 degree FOV
As 375X is greater than the useful magnification of the 6SE (which is 354), I never really used anything beyond the midrange of the zoom. I found that a slight zoom, probably in the 17mm range on the zoom was about perfect, for an FOV of 0.3 degrees (17'). For the next two hours, that was about the right viewing FOV, though I did slip in a 40mm Plossl for a while for a wide view, but often in that case light from nearby bright stars interfered with viewing.
It took about 25 seconds at first for the asteroid to move from one edge of the EP to the other, and as it sped up, probably only about 15 seconds as I approached 5AM. It was a small, perfectly visible white dot, which really amazed me.... I did not expect the 6SE telescope to have a large enough aperture to view the asteroid at mag +11.8. I was quite surprised really.
Once I locked onto a waypoint, I could use the Celestron Hand Control to guide the scope along, and could follow the asteroid indefinitely, so I didn't really need as many waypoints as I had originally plotted. Sometimes, I just had to take a sore neck break and then get back in sync at the next waypoint.
I observed at the following waypoints:
03:18AM - HD 83885 (mag +8.5) - Passed very close, <0.1deg (DA14 distance 79228km, mag +11.8)
04:11AM - HR 4102 (mag +3.99) - 02' from asteroid path (DA14 distance 59933, mag +10.8)
04:46AM - HR 4199 Vathorz Posterior (mag +2.74) - 01' from asteroid path (DA14 distance 47990, mag +10.0)
05:05AM - HD 94287 (mag +8.5) - 40' from path (DA14 distance 41937, mag +9.5)
I didn't expect to view past 5AM, so the last waypoint was one I chose at the site. I found it difficult sometimes to recognise the waypoint star... the telescope GOTO was not so precisely accurate, so in the case of HD 94287 I chose it because it was part of a pair of similar mag stars that were distinctive and acted as a "pointer" for me to be sure I knew exactly where the asteroid path was in the EP.
I tracked it from there manually until about 5:15AM until it was clear that the sky would be growing too light soon. So, packed up and went home.
The only thing that really went wrong is that I had my first experience with "morning dew", finally discovered that was the reason everything was staring to have a halo around it and gradually fade into oblivion. But, that didn't really occur until around 5AM. So, the next time, I'll hopefully be better prepared.
I hope this isn't too detailed, and is useful for beginners like me who might be uncertain what their equipment is capable of and what they can expect to see. I am also curious if any advanced viewers can point out better ways to do things, as I have a lot to learn. I have to say, this whole experience has redoubled my already enthusiastic attitude.
Well done garywiz. Vathorz Posterior was one of my waypoints too, but didn't end up using because I was so happy I found it at all I didn't risk losing it and re-finding!
Good spot at the Briars I've been to a couple of the public nights there.
I couldn't seem to get DA14 into my Sky Safari though? Wasn't in my list and the update did not pull it. Could find anywhere to add a custom object either.
Had a great night east of Perth viewing 2 comets, the asteroid and a beautiful fireball that left a persistant train. Amazingly, the fireball passed right through the same field of view as the asteroid, and I managed to capture both in the same 50 mm frame.
Attached is a quick image. The asteroid is the small vertically oriented notch about 3 cm from left edge and 1 cm from top. I'll post a better annotated image later after some sleep. The image is part of a longer timelapse. Hopefully it'll show the decaying meteor train + moving asteroid.
I managed a brief bit of video near time of closest approach. It moved so fast that it was pretty hard to keep up with! I tried to 'ambush' it by using an ephemeris point the telescope ahead of it and wait for it to drift through but was only successful once, then couldn't find it again. I was using an 8" and the field of view was way too small, but hey, it was a learning experience. I've seen a couple before and they were all slow moving and faint, so this fast, bright object took me a bit by surprise.
DA14 Success for a newbie
astro gods 
