Tonight's a great time to see an asteroid!

[Greg Stone]

If you've never tracked down an asteroid on your own, tonight (Feb 15) should give you a great opportunity. The brightest - and one of the largest - Vesta, will be right near a bright star in the sickle of Leo. I saw it this morning and it formed a perfect triangle then with Leo, and fifth magnitude 40 Leonis. Vests is a bit brighter than sixth magnitude right now.

Asteroids are not easy to see - they're usually dim, they change position from night to night, and they look just like any other faint star, even in a telescope. What makes Vesta so easy to find tonight is it will be very close to a bright star that's pretty close to the horizon and pretty much due east and right now the forecast is for reasonably clear skies.

It's easy to find, but you'll need binoculars. It will be about two fists up at 7 pm. Higher, as it gets later. When you look with the binoculars you'll see it forming a triangle with the brightest star - Algieba or Gamma Leonis - and it's constant companion 40 Leonis, which is quite a bit dimmer. Vesta will be the third brightest "star." Right next to it you may see a much dimmer star of about eighth magnitude.

It will be fun to look for this again later in the week to see how much it has moved. I put more details and charts you can print, on my web site:

http://tinyurl.com/ygycntj