Ceres & Vesta

[NGC 1502]

Hi all.   I've been looking forward to the historically rare close approach of Ceres & Vesta.  In Essex we had two clear nights last week, Tuesday 1st and Thursday 3rd July, so I put my 10 x 50 binos on a tripod on both evenings at twilight.   I was armed with 'Heavens Above' star maps showing the predicted positions.

By 2300 BST on the 1st, Zeta Virgo was easy naked eye, so using the bins, drew the starfield 1.5 degrees SW of that star, taking into account the Heavens Above map.  I was fairly sure I'd seen Ceres & Vesta.   But the observation on the 3rd confirmed it, the two points of light had shifted and matched predictions.

Vesta was dead easy to see in the 10 x 50s, Ceres a little more difficult in the less than dark sky.   On both nights I was also using my 70mm refractor at 20x, but the extra background stars visible, plus the mirror reversed view from the star diagonal, did confuse the issue a bit !

Dodgy drawing attached.  Sadly looking cloudy for tonight.

Regards, Ed.

[Ouroboros]

Well done. I managed to track these two fellas down a couple of nights ago through bins. As you say, Vesta is the easier of the two to spot. Ceres I could only see with averted viewing. I hope to get the telescope on them in the next few days. It'll be cloudy. :-)

[andrew63]

Nice job Ed - looks clear here tonight.

andrew