Apologies To Ceres

[saberscorpx]

With Saturn's razor-thin rings stealing the show I suppose it's been easy to overlook the nearby 8th mag glow of our first discovered and largest asteroid (or smallest 'dwarf' planet).
As my own penance, I'm including links to a couple of finder charts.
Currently a binocular target midway between delta and theta Leo, Ceres will make a retrograde loop around delta and brighten to mag 6.9 by opposition on 25 Feb 2009.
Ceres bio: http://www.solarviews.com/eng/ceres.htm

http://tinyurl.com/95gd4h
http://tinyurl.com/7e83ma


Saber Does The Stars at
www.astronomyblogs.com/member/saberscorpx (http://www.astronomyblogs.com/member/saberscorpx)

[glenc]

Thanks Stephen. The attached SkyMapPro map is for people down under.
The dwarf planet Ceres is 1.5 degrees below Zosma (delta Leo) this morning.
http://www.solarviews.com/raw/vss/VSS00020.jpg

With a diameter of about 950 km (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Km), Ceres is by far the largest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_noteworthy_asteroids) and most massive body in the asteroid belt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt), and contains a third (32%) of the belt's total mass (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass).