23 replies to this topic

[Matt1]

Hi


Does anyone know if we will be able to see the Meteor pass in the UK, all be well we have clear sky Any help be much appreciated.


Thanks

Matt

[alan potts]

According to the Sky at Night you will. If I recall the best time is around  2130hrs when it passes across part of the handle of the Great Bear. I need to check the exact times and placing but you will see it if you have good Binos or a scope, it's meant to be 8th magnitude.

Alan.

[Paul M]

It's maybe worth pointing out to anyone who hasn't made observations of this kind before that it's not going to be a TV spectacular by any stretch of the imagination.

Think of a faint star-like point in a scope or binoculars that isn't really do anything visually exciting. Quite a lot of people, including me, will try and very likely fail to even locate it.

The best results will be produced by those with guided telescopes and long exposure photography.

Just trying to balance any media hype

[Ganymede12]

I am just going to mention that 2012 DA 14 is an Asteroid. It's not a meteor unless it enters our atmosphere.
You should be able to see the asteroid but you'll need binoculars or a telescope to do so.

[steveb1977]

Here is a map I posted on another forum. It wont start to get fairly high until arount 9ish and by then will be starting to get dimmer. Although it wont at any point be visible to the naked eye.


http://www.virtualte...ocentricmap.jpg

[Matt1]

Thank you everyone for the infomation much appreciated.


Cheers

Matt

[Rockrae78]

I have my map ready, my scope and binoculars to hand, but so far, it doesn't look like the weather will be playing ball! Forecast for my area is partly cloudy till 9pm, then wall to wall cloud after! Typical.

[Paul M]

I wouldn't worry too much about forecasts this far out.

The Met Office chart (which is the de facto source of weather data used by any serious forecasters) shows that we will be in a building ridge of high pressure and a polar maritime airflow. Not a bad place to be for clear skys!

http://www.metbrief.com/EGRR.html

But like I say, it could be absolutely anything by then !!

[cotterless45]

Map ready waiting for clear skies. Given up on forecasts,
Nick.

[JamesF]

Yes, the forecast doesn't look to clever for here either, but I'll wait to see how it turns out.  From four days away it seems very difficult to predict our weather these days.

James

[cosmojaydee]

JamesF, on 11 February 2013 - 06:04 PM, said:

Yes, the forecast doesn't look to clever for here either, but I'll wait to see how it turns out.  From four days away it seems very difficult to predict our weather these days.

James

We live in hope, this is England , clear skies meh

[Scooot]

There's been a lot of discussion about this asteroid on The Southern Stars support forum and the guys have been doing a lot of work on the Sky Safari App. They've just made an announcement today. So it looks like we should be able to locate it fairly accurately with the app

http://tech.groups.y...rs/message/6198

[David Smith]

I have managed to get it to show in CdC / Skycharts but not having any luck getting it to show in Stellarium. I have downloaded the latest MPC files but still is not found by the search query. Anybody else managed to do this?

[Paul M]

David_The_Bears_Fan, on 12 February 2013 - 09:49 PM, said:

I have managed to get it to show in CdC / Skycharts but not having any luck getting it to show in Stellarium. I have downloaded the latest MPC files but still is not found by the search query. Anybody else managed to do this?

I have it showing in Stellarium and although the path looks correct it's running about 2 hours ahead of actual timings so of little use.

Apparently this is due to  Stellarium not taking account of Earth's gravitational influence during it's close pass.

This problem has just been rectified in SkySafari for Android devices. If you have one I'd download it!!

[petek314]

I am not sure how accurate it is but the chart created for my location in Shropshire using the "heavens above" site shows a different track for the asteroid. In the past this site has been accurate for the prediction of satellites so I will probably use their chart if the sky is clear.

[Scooot]

This was the text on my link that was broken, it explains the difficulties and how sky Safari have overcome it.


"It's time to spill the beans.  Apple has just released SkySafari Plus/Pro 3.7.3 for iOS, and we've released SkySafari 1.7.3 for Mac OS X and Android.

About 2 weeks ago, we started to get these questions about 2012 DA14, and why our apps fail to predict its position accurately.  The problem was that SkySafari - like basically all other mobile and desktop planetarium apps - models the motion of comets and asteroids as having a simple Keplerian, elliptical orbit around the Sun.  We did not take pertubrations  by Earth's gravity into account.  So any orbit that describes the asteroid's motion before the flyby will completely fail to predict its position afterwards, and vide-versa.  After answering this question the 327th time, I finally decided to do something better.  

The solution was to build an "orbit integrator" into SkySafari.  Instead of modelling the trajectory of the asteroid as a simple Keplerian ellipse, we now model it using true N-body newtonian physics, taking the gravitational perturbations of Earth (and the Moon, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) into account, along with a decent numerical method (4th order Runge-Kutta).  It took a few tries to get this right.  After reaching out to some professionals in the field of solar system dynamics, we got some assistance JPL as well.  JPL has made clear that they cannot officially endorse any commercial product, but I can confidently say they were impressed that we got this working on a smartphone at all.

We did take some shortcuts.  Our model does not take relativity into account, nor the oblateness of the Earth.  We also don't include Mercury, Uranus, or Neptune in the set of asteroid-perturbing masses.  (Smartphones, whiie very capable, are still not supercomputers.  The code still has to run fast enough to be useable.)  Nevertheless, even with these shortcuts, our model predicts the position of 2012 DA14 to within arcseconds of JPL's positions on the day of the flyby and for many days before and after.  We've even run our integrator out 9 years into the past or future, for a selection of different asteroids and comets, and in nearly all cases it does much better than a simple Keplerian orbit.  So we're very confident that we're doing the math right.

Anyhow, that's the theory.  In practice, here's what you need to know.

1) Plus and Pro only.  The integrator is not in the Basic version.

2) You still need to update your minor body orbit data, just like you did before.  The orbit integrator is useless if it doesn't have a decent orbit to start from.

3) The integrator only gets "turned on" when you select a particular comet or asteroid, and it's only used for the asteroid/comet you selected.

4) We run the integrator for one year in the past and future from the date of the orbital elements, using a 1-hour timestep.  All that math takes about 1.5 seconds on my iPhone 4, which is the slowest device I own.  (You'll feel a brief pause when first selecting a new asteroid or comet).

5) Since we only run the integrator one year from the date of issue of the orbital elements, don't try to use it to find out if asteroid Apophis will hit Earth in 2036.  It won't work.  At least not in this release.  Yet.

So that's it for now.  Have fun with it, and let us know how it works for you."

-

[Blurred Image]

Ganymede12, on 06 February 2013 - 08:11 PM, said:

I am just going to mention that 2012 DA 14 is an Asteroid. It's not a meteor unless it enters our atmosphere.

Let's pray it stays an Asteroid then, something that size whizzing around in the atmosphere would freak out half the world's population.  But you  would easily see it so you could put your maps away .

[bntwillis]

Not going to be able to see it in the states.

[euphony]

According to the BBC it should be at it's closest at 19:24 in the UK, but it doesn't say where it will be seen. I see the handle of the great bear mentioned above, is this still the concensus? I think I need to do a little more digging as by some mmiracle it's forecast to be clear.

If so, and I find it, I can call my wife out excitedly who will look through the bino's and think I'm making it up and say i can't see 'anything'

[euphony]

ahh..just found an updated article on the website,so anywhere between 19:45 and 23:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-21442863

Edited by euphony, 15 February 2013 - 07:18 AM.