Re: (SNES) No Luck with Asteroid 2002 NY 40

[Albireo54@aol.com]

In a message dated 8/20/2002 3:56:22 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
dbartolini@lucent.com writes:


> Given that there was a similar asteroid a year ago
> (1998 WT24), I expect that the LINEAR program will find more of these near
> misses in the not to distant future 

Hi Dave,

I was fortunate enough to observe this fast moving asteroid (1998 WT24) from 
Webster in my C8. It would have been very hard to see at all in binoculars, 
but was a snap in my eyepiece FOV of just over one degree. It's motion was 
VERY obvious - like a slow moving Earth satellite, and I had a blast 
following it over a couple of nights.

<<I have observed a more typical asteroid once (Ceres, I believe), and I 
can't say
that I plan on spending any energy looking for another asteroid.>>

I bump into asteroids all the time, and you're right - they don't offer much 
visually. Sometimes at FDO we'll observe one with the public early in an 
evening and then check back after a few hours to note the asteroids's 
progress - which can be considerable, especially when they are near 
opposition.

Two asteroids, Vesta and Ceres are large enough and get close enough to us 
that they can be resolved into tiny disks in large amateur instruments like 
your Starmaster. We've done this with Vesta at FDO quite unexpectedly; not 
until after checking JPL / NEO did we confirm that what we thought was a disk 
actually was - it reaches about 0.8" near opposition - about the same size as 
Jupiter's moon Europa - which many observers routinely see as a disk. Ceres 
is even larger than Vesta, but doesn't come as close to Earth. It reaches 
opposition this year on October 5th.

Enjoy,
:o)
Doug Stewart
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