Monday 17th to Sunday 23rd July 2023
It's time to go hunting for a minor planet in the Asteroid Belt.
Last week I suggested looking towards the east to see Jupiter and the bright star Capella. Look east again at around 3am on Tuesday 18th and you will have a similar view, with the Pleiades open cluster of stars sitting about half way between Jupiter and Capella. Down from the Pleiades and quite close to the horizon will be the bright star Aldebaran.
Our target, the minor planet (4) Vesta is hiding a little above and to the left of Aldebaran. It will only have a magnitude of around +8.3 so you will definitely need a small telescope to be able to spot it.
(4) Vesta is the second-largest minor planet in the Asteroid Belt (second only to Ceres) with a mean diameter of 525Km. It is also the brightest object in the belt. The asteroid is rocky and made from the same materials that formed the planets of the inner Solar System billions of years ago, but how do we know this?
Vesta is covered in impact craters. Around 1 - 2 billion years ago, numerous fragments were ejected after several collisions and some of this debris made its way to Earth, landing as meteorites for scientists to subsequently study.
Interest is this little rocky fella has been so great that the NASA Dawn spacecraft spent a year orbiting around it in 2011 before continuing its main mission towards Ceres.
Screenshots courtesy of Stellarium
Copyright Adrian Dening and Radio Ninesprings 2023
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