The Pithy Amateur Astronomer

The adventure and aggregation of a short-winded amateur astronomer.

I never paid much attention to NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day until my wife got me my all-time "wants" for Christmas (a telescope). Since then, on clear nights, I always want to find and identify stasrs.and planets.

Anways, NASA released this interesting photo of 4 Vesta.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100218.html


Explanation: Main belt asteroid 4 Vesta is at its brightest now. The small world is near opposition (opposite the Sun in the sky) and closest to Earth. But even at its brightest, Vesta is just too faint to spot with the naked-eye. Still, over the next few days it will be relatively easy to find in the constellation Leo, sharing a typical binocular field of view with bright star Gamma Leonis (aka Algieba). In fact on February 16 Vesta passed between Gamma Leonis and close neighbor on the sky 40 Leonis. Gamma Leonis is the brightest star in these two panels, while the second brightest star, 40 Leonis, is directy to its right. As marked, Vesta is the third brightest "star" in the field. Vesta shifts position between the two panels from well below 40 Leonis on Feb. 14 to near the top of the frame from Feb. 16, shooting the gap between the close Gamma/40 Leonis pair. Of course, premier close-up views of the asteroid will be possible after the ion-powered Dawn spacecraft arrives at Vesta in August of 2011. 

 






From Wikipedia
4 Vesta is the second most massive object in the asteroid belt, with a mean diameter of about 530 km[1] and an estimated mass of 9% of the mass of the entire asteroid belt.[10] It was discovered by the German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers on March 29, 1807,[1] and named after the Roman virgin goddess of home and hearth, Vesta.

EDIT [2/19/10 06:37]: I was a bit on the "loopy" side from an accident when I wrote this article. Pardon my grammar and any other form of error that was made.

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