[meteorite-list] Flyby of Asteroid 2002 NY40

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:52:14 2004
Message-ID: <200208151553.IAA15039_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

FLYBY OF 2002 NY40

Roger W. Sinnott
Senior Editor
Sky & Telescope

On Saturday night, August 17-18, observers in Europe, Africa,
and the Americas are very well positioned to observe the flyby
of 2002 NY40, a recently discovered near-Earth asteroid. During
that night alone it passes through five constellations,
beginning in Sagitta and ending up in Hercules.
 
As mentioned in an earlier AstroAlert, this 0.5-km object
passes only a little outside the Moon's orbit. It is expected
to become as bright as 9th magnitude in the hours leading up
to closest approach, which occurs near 7:47 Universal Time
on August 18th. Observers with small telescopes and even
binoculars should be able to witness this rare event.

Using a magnification of 50x or more, skywatchers should have
no trouble perceiving the object's motion as it glides by
background stars in the field of view. It will be moving at
up to 8 arcminutes per minute of time!

Sky & Telescope has prepared four detailed finder charts for
2002 NY40, showing its path across a 60-degree arc of sky that
night. These charts are PDFs, meaning they can be viewed or
printed on a computer that has Acrobat Reader (free downloadable
software).

For links to the charts, see our updated article on the flyby at:
http://skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/asteroids/article_697_1.asp
The links to the charts are on page 2.

Instead of a single track, the charts show individual tracks as
seen from five different cities: London, Johannesburg, Boston,
Buenos Aires, and Los Angeles. The idea is that you can estimate
the asteroid's track for your own location using these cities for
reference. The magnitude limit for stars is 8.6.

These charts were prepared with the help of the Minor Planet Center's
Ephemeris Service ( http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/mpc.html ), a
valuable resource in any close encounter of this type.

After printing out one of our charts, you must orient it to match the
field of view of your telescope. To simplify this process, Lawrence
Garrett (Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers) has devised
a clever observing aid that can be built from simple hardware items
( http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~rhill/alpo/minplan/easy/easyview.html ).

Good luck observing this rather unusual event!

Roger W. Sinnott
Senior Editor
Sky & Telescope
Received on Thu 15 Aug 2002 11:53:06 AM PDT