NEO 2012 DA14 visibility from Australia

[ian musgrave]

Near Earth Asteroid 2012 DA14 will be visible from Australia dring its record breaking close approach on February 16 in the early morning, WA fares best, with the brightest and fastest part of the orbit occurring after astronomical twilight for the central and eastern states.

I have a map and links to Heavens Above, where you can generate local maps here

http://astroblogger.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/get-ready-for-asteroid-2012-da14.html

[Analog6]

How do I generate a chart from heavens Above. I can't work out how
to do it for 2012 DA14

[AstroJunk]

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=101542

Have a look over this thread: there is plenty of help in there to make sure you find it.

[mithrandir]

Odille, have you defined your location in HA? When I logged on it immediately offered to draw a chart for me.


The east coast only gets a couple of hours before twilight, starting around 02:00

[OzEclipse]

This will be a challenging observation from the east coast for an experienced observer. Early in the evening, it's apparent motion will be slow but it will be quite faint mag 14 Mag 14 is difficult in an 8 inch and easy in a 16inch scope analogous to observing Jupiter.

At dawn it will mag 9, easier in smaller scopes but moving very fast so that it moves through a typical wide angle telescope field (1 deg) every 2 minutes. You need to get ahead of it and wait for it whether you have goto or not. I won't cover advanced equipment that can track objects like this, those owners obviously don't need any advice.

At dawn with a basic GOTO scope, by the time you enter current coords and slew, the asteroid will be out of field. You'll need to slew ahead of the object and wait for it to come into field. Use the same approach if you don't have goto, find a star near the path and wait for the asteroid to pass through the field.

Planetarium programs are not producing accurate finder charts because most of these planetarium programs use a geocentric (centre of the Earth) reference point.

The object will be as close as 3.5 Earth radii. When a close object is overhead the geocentric view and the local view coincide but when the object is near the horizon, you are approaching being 6400km off the line of sight that a planetarium program uses. In the extreme, that can lead to a 15 degree error in plotted position if calculated correctly.

Parallax also leads to a difference in apparent position of about 1 degree between Brisbane and Sydney at 18:00UT so it is important that you don't use any finder chart but one accurately generated for your area. The accuracy of the chart depends on the field of view of the scope you will be using. A chart produced for a lat/long 100km from you will be about 0.1 degree out at 18:00UT. Insignificant if using a wide field refractor, more significant if using a large SCT.

No matter where you live, use the NASA horizons tool to generate coordinates for your general location and plot manually onto a star atlas.

http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi#top

The geocentric (centre of the Earth) reference point is a perfectly valid approach for the vast majority of objects and reduces the number of calculations which in turn makes the program run faster.

The object will be as close as 3.5 Earth radii at its closest. When a close object is overhead to the observer, it is on a line between the center of the Earth and the object so the geocentric view and the local view coincide but when the object is away from the zenith, you are off the line of sight that a planetarium program uses. In the extreme, that can lead to an error in plotted position if calculated correctly. In the extreme case of DA 14 near the horizon when at closest approach of 22500km could lead to a 15 degree parallax error.

On the east coast, the asteroid disappears in twilight when it is about 44000km from Earth. At that time it is at an altitude of 60 deg here in Canberra which could lead to a parallax error of 4 degrees. In Perth, the object is observable at closest approach at a similar altitude and therefore could be off by around 8 degrees.

I use the latest version of starry night. It has DA 14 in the object list but the elements are a mile off. It miscalculated the position at 4am on the 16th by a whopping 35 degrees compared to the Horizons ephemeris. That's not parallax, it's something wrong with the elements used.

On the east coast, it's at its brightest (Mv=9) at astronomical twilight just after 18:00UT. At that time, it will be moving 0.5 degrees per minute. Most of this motion is in DEC. The RA apparent motion starts the night at 0.05 deg/min and only increases to about 0.06 at dawn. But DEC starts the night with almost zero drift and ramps up to about 0.5 deg/min at dawn.

None of this will be news to the many experienced observers on this forum but the many beginners should be aware this won't be an easy object to track. Don't blindly trust planetarium programs.

Joe Cali

[Shark Bait]

No argument there Joe. The makers of Starry Night do not include some NEO's in their automatic updates. Instead I went through the process of manually adding the required data to Starry Night V6.3 and the results were way off when compared to the JPL data. Plotting the path of the asteroid on a paper star chart using the JPL data for my location was the solution.

Fingers crossed for clear skies.

[OzEclipse]

Stu,
I only purchased v6 a week ago using the special $99 pricing deal they have for SN Pro plus 6. Probably means SN v7.0 will be out next week:D

So I'm running v6.4.3. I updated my objects list a few days ago after installing and DA 14 is in my SN object list but still generates completely wrong coordinates. It's not just parallax shifted but looks like the wrong inclination. I haven't compared the elements but it's obvious the orbital elements are very wrong. Inclination is out by 60 or so degrees.

The path shows DA 14 traveling between a point south of the SMC to a point south of the LMC.

The horizons path has it traveling mostly northwards accelerating during the night with a small and pretty constant eastwards motion.

Joe

[OzEclipse]

Stu,
I only purchased v6 a week ago using the special $99 pricing deal they have for SN Pro plus 6. Probably means SN v7.0 will be out next week:D

So I'm running v6.4.3. I updated my objects list a few days ago after installing and DA 14 is in my SN object list but still generates completely wrong coordinates. It's not just parallax shifted but looks like the wrong inclination. I haven't compared the elements but it's obvious the orbital elements are very wrong. Inclination is out by 60 or so degrees.

The path shows DA 14 traveling between a point south of the SMC to a point south of the LMC.

[gaa_ian]

Thanks for the heads up Ian and the link to Heavens Above.
Gove NT will get good visibility & of course I will be on the east coast at that time in Cairns. I will certainly be giving it a go though !

[Shark Bait]

I have just checked my copy of Starry Night Enthusiast and it is Version 6.4.3 as well. Since I last looked, Simulation Curriculum have released an automatic update that includes Asteroid 2012 DA14. Their orbital path almost matches the data that I manually added to the new asteroid objects but it is still a long way off when compared to the JPL data. Obviously, I will be using the JPL data for my location that I plotted onto the paper star charts.

To be fair, I am surprised that they added Asteroid 2012 DA14 to their updates. This is what they have to say about NEO's on their online help site:

Starry Night's asteroid data file (the Asteroids.txt file in your Sky Data folder# contains a selection of interesting objects. There are far more such objects available than we include in Starry Night; if we included the hundreds of thousands of known asteroids, the average home computer would not be able to run the simulation. In addition, the orbital data for some near-Earth asteroids #NEOs) are changing so quickly that we do not include them, in the interests of accuracy.

The rest of SN's help information for NEO's can be found at this link:
https://support.simulationcurriculum.com/entries/21172082-asteroids-in-starry-night

[Shark Bait]

As the orbital data from JPL has been updated I went back to check the hourly markers on my paper star charts for Asteroid 2012 DA14. There are small alterations to the hourly positions but the path traced by the asteroid as it moves across the sky has not really shifted.

As an example of how far Starry Night is missing by (for my location), at 4am EST on the 16th Feb:

JPL's data has the asteroid passing through Eta Carinae Nebula :thumbsup:

SN v6.4.3 shows the asteroid passing through Mensa heading towards the LMC.

This means that at 4am, SN is off the predicted path by approx 27 degrees.

[Limax7]

Hi,

You better use geocentric orbital data for this asteroid. Heliocentric orbit is no good for this. Read Bill Gray post how he do that in own software GUIDE
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/guide-user/message/9270

[Shark Bait]

Thanks Limax,

I have had a quick look at the site in your link. I will have to study it in more detail before I can make use of the information on offer.

[mithrandir]

Joe, where did you get that price? I can't see any specials on http://store.simulationcurriculum.com

[OzEclipse]

"Netwolf" published a discount code in the software thread that you type in at checkout.
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=102580

Code : The promo code is: pplusjan2013

When you type in the code during checkout, the price drops from $249 to $99. Unfortunately, the discount was for January only however I suggest you try it today and see because the USA February business month doesn't start until tonight. Others in the thread reported being able to use the code over the weekend.

Joe

[jaradmartin]

Some interesting media (on ABC news at least) about this upcoming approach and even catching on in social media (I just saw a post from Jon Stewart, from the daily show). Given the Science article this week adding more evidence to the dinosaur impact extinction hypothesis, this might be a great opportunity for astronomy popularization at the local level.

[Suzy]

Just spotted your article on the asteroid for ABC Science, Ian!
Loved it and so well explained.
And the scale you explained with the ball and the sesame seed was great fun to read and picture in my head. :D


Lots more info here (http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/02/13/3688782.htm), Ian gives the locations and approx. times where it'll be bright enough.

[hotspur]

Had a look at HA and the data it gave for our location,if I type in the coordinates of the 5 am position and start taking a few photos,would that be best?

I have a Vixen Sky Sensor 2000pc and I think it can be give comet data and track it,not sure if an astriod would be similar-and its been a while since I have used it,but looking at giving it ago.

not sure where to find a sky view map,I did see the link given which showed one for S.A area-certainly be handy if there was a S.E QLD one somewhere.

[astroron]

5am is daylight Chris, So you would see nothing.
find your coordinates from here then find it visually.
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi#results
Best view for SEQ will be about 03:30 before it starts getting light.
The asteroid will still be only mag 9.7, so quite faint really,but should be
alright for imaging.
Cheers:thumbsup:

[garywiz]

Here in Melbourne, Astronomical Dawn is at 5:11AM. Obviously, it's a close call, but I think people who view in the 3AM to 5AM should have a reasonable chance as DA14 approaches earth for its closest pass.

Of course location changes everything. But, even in Brisbane, it's 5:09AM, so I think it's still reasonable to have 5AM be the end of the viewing window. No?

[icytailmark]

will i be able to view it with a finderscope?

[steve000]

"Oh hey Brisbane I hear you are having an astronomical event... here have some thick clouds."

[Suzy]

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. :lol:

[Suzy]

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. :)

[OzEclipse]

Mark,

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.

Joe

[Suzy]

Oh good grief :lol: 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. :mad2:

Wishing you all the best & clear skies in seeing this. :) Errr both events!

[frank farrell]

Hi there, is this object visible at 2:00am in Crux as seen from 300km east of Perth?

[AstroJunk]

This is the plot from perth - your track will be a little to the west (right)

[frank farrell]

excellent information Jonathan. Thank you. A very quick reply.

[andyc]

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...

[von Tom]

Partially clear sky in Brisbane. The south is visible from Bayside!

[AstroJunk]

Clear in samford and I'm on NASA tv with 108 thousand viewers!

[Iain.k]

All clear in hobart for a change.

[inline_online]

Wow:tasdevil::party2:
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:party:

[OzEclipse]

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! :mad2:

Hope others had more luck than I did .

Joe

[markgo76]

At the risk of being shot for cross-posting, I'm a changed man!:
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=103409

[garywiz]

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.

[markgo76]

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.

Mark.

[colinmlegg]

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.

:thumbsup: astro gods :)

[Blue Skies]

I managed a brief bit of video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJohIFWHzzk&feature=youtu.be)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.

[pdthomas23]

I had what I regard as a successful morning observing from my brother-in-law's place a bit north of Kyneton in central Vic.
I'd decided to go north on the strength of 7timer and Skippy Sky predictions that the sky would be clear and a bit more transparent than Melbourne. I've also realised that I haven't used the scope in the backyard since we built our new garage and it just wasn't looking good for access to the right parts of the sky.
I also wanted to see comet Lemmon from a darker site.
Arrived up there about midnight and observed until 6 am.
Didn't start looking for 2012 DA14 until a bit after 3 am. I initially picked it up at 3:30 as it movd into the area where I'd made more detailed charts.
I lost it again soon after when I paused to send a text to say I'd found it.
Followed it, with the occasional loss of contact through until dawn.
Lost it for the last time around 6 am when the sky was brightening and I didn't have many other references. I went to readjust the scope in a different way and couldn't pick it up again.
I had also been checking the finder towards the end and I believe I did spot it there.
Quite a problem with dew until the wind changed at 5 am and brought some noticeably warmer air.
Also had my look at comet Lemmon in the earlier part of the night. Made a nice pair with 47 Tuc, looking like twins either side of a star in binoculars.

Peter Thomas
Oakleigh

[sil]

I took two test shots around 02:00 to evaluate my camera settings and also try to locate DA14 with a 50mm lens to make sure I had correct data for its location. Both shots ended up overexposed but DA14 was in both of them, where expected as a VERY faint trail (actually wasn't expecting to be able to capture it at all that early).

Spent some time inside checking the photos, working out optimal settings, spraying on aerogard, setting up the mozzie lantern then headed back out side to see clouds. They came in fast and just got thicker and thicker. Come 06:00 its getting too light, I gave up any hope of a gap appearing and went back to bed.

At least getting up much earlier and taking some test shots gave me something.