Asteroid 16 Psyche will be well placed for observation, lying in the constellation Capricornus, well above the horizon for much of the night.
Regardless of your location on the Earth, 16 Psyche will reach its highest point in the sky at around midnight local time.
From Ashburn, it will be visible between 22:17 and 04:11. It will become accessible at around 22:17, when it rises 21° above your south-eastern horizon, and then reach its highest point in the sky at 01:16, 35° above your southern horizon. It will become inaccessible at around 04:11 when it sinks to 22° above your south-western horizon.
The geometry of the alignment
This optimal positioning occurs when it makes its closest approach to the point in the sky directly opposite to the Sun – an event termed opposition. Since the Sun reaches its greatest distance below the horizon at midnight, the point opposite to it is highest in the sky at the same time.
At around the same time that 16 Psyche passes opposition, it also makes its closest approach to the Earth – termed its perigee – making it appear at its brightest in the night sky. This happens because when 16 Psyche lies opposite to the Sun in the night sky, the solar system is lined up so that 16 Psyche, the Earth and the Sun lie in a straight line with the Earth in the middle, on the same side of the Sun as 16 Psyche.
On this occasion, 16 Psyche will pass within 1.71 AU of us, reaching a peak brightness of magnitude 9.3. Nonetheless, even at its brightest, 16 Psyche is a faint object beyond the reach of the naked eye or binoculars; a telescope of moderate aperture and a good star chart are needed.
Finding 16 Psyche
The star charts below mark the path of 16 Psyche across the sky around the time of its opposition.
This star chart is also available to download:
| Light-on-dark | PNG image | PDF document |
| Dark-on-light | PNG image | PDF document |
The exact position of 16 Psyche at the moment of opposition will be as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude |
| Asteroid 16 Psyche | 21h04m20s | -15°19' | Capricornus | 9.3 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.
| The sky on 06 August 2019 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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43% 5 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
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Source
The circumstances of this event were computed from orbital elements made available by Ted Bowell of the Lowell Observatory. The conversion to geocentric coordinates was performed using the position of the Earth recorded in the DE405 ephemeris published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
The star chart above shows the positions and magnitudes of stars as they appear in the Tycho catalogue. The data was reduced by the author and plotted using PyXPlot. A gnomonic projection of the sky has been used; celestial coordinates are indicated in the J2000.0 coordinate system.
Image credit
© NASA/Galileo 1993. Pictured asteroid is 243 Ida.