© European Southern Observatory 2021. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser/Vernazza et al./MISTRAL algorithm (ONERA/CNRS).

Asteroid 8 Flora at opposition

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Asteroids feed

Objects: 8 Flora
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The sky at

Asteroid 8 Flora will be well placed, lying in the constellation Cetus, well above the horizon for much of the night.

Regardless of your location on the Earth, 8 Flora will reach its highest point in the sky around midnight local time.

From Fairfield, it will be visible between 21:12 and 04:46. It will become accessible at around 21:12, when it rises to an altitude of 21° above your south-eastern horizon. It will reach its highest point in the sky at 00:59, 45° above your southern horizon. It will become inaccessible at around 04:46 when it sinks below 21° above your south-western horizon.

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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 8 Flora 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 8 Flora lies opposite to the Sun in the night sky, the solar system is lined up so that 8 Flora, the Earth and the Sun lie in a straight line with the Earth in the middle, on the same side of the Sun as 8 Flora.

On this occasion, 8 Flora will pass within 0.879 AU of us, reaching a peak brightness of magnitude 8.2. Nonetheless, even at its brightest, 8 Flora is a faint object beyond the reach of the naked eye; binoculars or a telescope of moderate aperture are needed.

Finding 8 Flora

The chart below indicates the path of 8 Flora across the sky around the time of opposition.

It was produced using StarCharter and is available for download, either on dark background, in PNG, PDF or SVG formats, or on a light background, in PNG, PDF or SVG formats.

The position of 8 Flora at the moment of opposition will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude
Asteroid 8 Flora 01h38m20s 3°15'S Cetus 8.2

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 14 Oct 2033

The sky on 14 October 2033
Sunrise
07:00
Sunset
18:13
Twilight ends
19:44
Twilight begins
05:28

21-day old moon
Waning Crescent

45%

21 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 09:05 13:58 18:51
Venus 05:19 11:25 17:31
Moon 22:45 06:07 13:26
Mars 14:43 19:18 23:53
Jupiter 16:02 21:16 02:30
Saturn 23:24 06:48 14:12
All times shown in EDT.

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 DE430 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

© European Southern Observatory 2021. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser/Vernazza et al./MISTRAL algorithm (ONERA/CNRS).

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Fairfield

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41.14°N
73.26°W
EDT

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