[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.