Asteroid 2 Pallas Opposes Sun - 2021 SEP 11

[CentaurZ]

 

Asteroid 2 Pallas will appear within Pisces in opposition to the Sun on 2021 SEP 11 at magnitude +8.6. It has high orbital eccentricity and inclination from the ecliptic. Pallas was discovered in 1802, and has a mean diameter of 512 km.

Photos and descriptions of Pallas would be welcome additions to this thread.

 

Edited September 4, 2021 by CentaurZ

[Nik271]

I observed Pallas last night (6 October). It's 9-th magnitide at the moment so tricky to find manually. It is currently close to Lambda Aqr and from there it's an easy star hop in the finder to the 7-th magnitude HD 216503. Pallas was 10' west of it last night and is moving south for the next few weeks.

Pallas is the largest asteroid that we haven't observed close up. Unlike  Ceres and Vesta  future missions to Pallas will be difficult because it has very large orbital inclination. I guess we'll have to live  with blurry views of it from terrestrial telescopes  for the near future. In my telescope (127 Mak at x120 magnification) it looked like a star. I was happy just to be able to track it down.