If you want to try your hand at some asteroid spotting this evening, BL 86 is about to make a close approach to Earth, passing within 1.2 million kilometres of our planet (thats just over 3 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon). It will still be pretty faint, only reaching a peak brightness of magnitude 9, so really a telescope will be required. You can find a great finder chart produced by NASA at neo.jpl.nasa.gov/images/2004bl86_starchart.jpg but please note that this is produced for the northern hemisphere so you will need to turn it upside down for a southern hemisphere view. The times given are Universal time, so just add on 13 hours for NZ summer time.
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 21:32:19 +0000
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