Asteroid 3200 Phaethon: Geminid Parent at Its Closest and Brightest

[geolindon]

Below are some copy n pastes from http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/3200-phaethon/

The parent asteroid of December's Geminid meteor shower, 3200 Phaethon, is about to make a historically close flyby.

Not only will Phaethon be brighter than ever(peaking at between magnitude 10.7 and 10.9), but its appearance coincides with the December 13–14 peak of the annual Geminid meteor shower — a rare pairing!

Try to catch Phaethon now because it won't get this bright again until December 2093, when it will pass within 0.02 AU of Earth and brighten to magnitude 9.4.

Clear skies ? ? any where ? ?
L

[OzEclipse]

Lindon

Thanks for posting this. Observations easier for you than me. Altitude from Canberra is very low in the north on nights of closest approach and max brightness. Gets higher & easier to observe as it fades.

In years gone by, we've noted large discrepancies in apparent position between common planetarium programs possibly due to some using a geocentric calculation method and not coping with the parallax of close flybys from different locations on Earth.

Suggest anybody attempting this compare the apparent position shown on their favourite program with a topocentric ephemeris generated for their exact location on NASA Horizons or MPEph.

Starry Night 6 was particularly bad at this however I have done a couple of point comparisons using Starry Night 7 Pro and Sky Safari 5 and they are both show apparent positions for my location that are pretty close to the
NASA Horizons ephemeris.

NASA Horizons ephemeris.
https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi#top

MPEph
https://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/MPEph/MPEph.html

cheers

Joe