Asteroid 2011 GP59 viewable from southern skies?

[Ivyking]

Hi people just read this article

http://www.news.com.au/technology/sci-tech/scientists-find-asteroid-with-potential-power-of-15-atomic-bombs-heading-this-way-tonight/story-fn5fsgyc-1226039534091

its about a very close (533,000km away) 50m asteroid passing by us. Just wondering if anyone has seen this or knows if it is observable in the sky tonight and where it may be? I only have a dob with no tracking so if anyone could help it would be most appreciated.

Cheers peeps

[mithrandir]

It is moving pretty fast across the sky, is not very bright, and will be rather drowned out by the Moon. You can use this in Stellarium to simulate it.

[2011gp59]
parent = Sun
orbit_Inclination = 8.7566
coord_func = comet_orbit
orbit_Eccentricity = 0.25895
orbit_ArgOfPericenter = 320.5949
absolute_magnitude = 24.3
name = 2011 GP59
orbit_Epoch = 2455600.5
slope_parameter = 0.15
lighting = false
tex_map = nomap.png
color = 1.0, 1.0, 1.0
orbit_AscendingNode = 24.5568
orbit_MeanMotion = 1.2264728
orbit_MeanAnomaly = 160.4104
orbit_SemiMajorAxis = 0.864366
albedo = 0.15
radius = 1
type = asteroid

[AstroJunk]

Here's my video from tonight. It moving at a fair old pace now!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQN9cip0DDw

They are interesting to find - you need to get the local position (ephemerids)from the Minor Planet Center (MPC) for every 15 Min's or so when you plan to observe, and point your scope in advance and wait...

I made the mistake yesterday of assuming that a planetarium program could plot the position, but they don't tent to account for parallax due to the closeness of NEO, so are rather inaccurate for them.

[sasup]

very cool

[kinetic]

Nope I definitely missed it.:rolleyes:
Here is a rough miss chart.
My DSI field is the red rectangle
The 3 rough plots are 1 min intervals.
Do your homework Steve!

Steve

[AstroJunk]

Yup, exactly what I did the first night! It's much easier when you look in the right place :lol:

Hope you get a clear one tonight...

[Liz]

Thats great Jonathon!!! :thumbsup:

[astroron]

Thanks Jonathon:thumbsup:
Cheers

[AstroJunk]

Cheers, it's just a shame that the Qld wet continues and I can't get any more footage :(

I found it interesting that I started to get latin comments on youtube - turned out that it got used on some Argentinian and Peruvian on-line newspapers.

I hope they were nice coments :lol: