Heads up: close asteroid approach 29th June 2024

[lukebl]

There’s an interesting flyby of a new Near Earth Asteroid visible from the UK on Saturday night (29th June). 

2024 MK, approximately 200 metres across and only discovered 10 days ago, will be closer than the moon on closest approach and up to magnitude 9. It starts off on Saturday morning in the southern sky, but rapidly moves north and by midnight on Sat/Sun it will be visible at mag 11 scooting through Pegasus at a rate of 200 arc seconds a minute! The following night it will have slowed down and faded to mag 14 and in Andromeda. If I can manage to stay up I’ll try and catch a video of it with my WATEC video cam.

Here’s a screen grab from Sky Safari showing its position (BST) on Saturday night.

 

Edited Thursday at 10:16 by lukebl

[happy-kat]

Realistically I think I will not be able to capture this, the all sky camera at a push picks up mag 8, so mag 11 is a pass. Good luck to anyone else trying.

[Wiu-Wiu]

We were able to image it yesterday from our remote in Australia. Today was overcast, sadly. 

GIF animation: 12 frames of 10s

[happy-kat]

Do you think it's s brighter than mag 11 I read predicted ,?

Edited 7 hours ago by happy-kat

[MalcolmP]

If I am reading vanBuitenen  correctly, http://astro.vanbuitenen.nl/neo/2024 MK
it looks like it becomes brighter than mag11 after midnight 29/30 possibly to m10.5 by 3am or dawn for us in UK, 
heading for mag9 round the dark side of the earth later tomorrow ?

I am still trying to work out what is going on in my Stellarium which has it steadily becoming less bright than 11 during the same period

Out of my league anyhow, needing a stack of 10x2sec to get to m10.5, not on with such a rapidly moving object I think, but may be of interest to Seestar50 owners.

 

[MalcolmP]

Hastily prepared, so liable to errors, but this is what I have in Stellarium looking east for sw England.
At dusk low in the east but rising high in the se by dawn.
Please dont shoot the messenger if I have got summat wrong !
 

 

 

[lukebl]

I think the most reliable ephemeris source is the JPL Horizons System, which gives its maximum magnitude as around 9 at 12:00 UT on 29th June, falling steadily to 11.8 at midnight, then 12.9 at 6:00 on 30th, 13.7 at 12:00, 14.3 at 18:00 and 14.8 at 24:00.

Sadly it’s cloudy here tonight, so no luck here.

[MalcolmP]

Thanks, I must be  a day out  please ignore my previous posts, That is sad because I have a clear sky just now !

[happy-kat]

Being optimistic I'll leave the allsky on the E SE window tonight

[Paul M]

I'm getting quite a lot a variation in positions for this using SkySafari and HNSky. They don't agree with each other and neither agrees with the output from the MPC ephemeris service, the output of which is pasted below, positions on the hour (UTC) for the overnight period tonight.

I'm away from home and the sky isn't overly promising but if it does clear up I might drag out my cutesy 127 Mak and eyeball this thing...maybe!

https://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/MPEph/MPEph.html

 

Edited 6 hours ago by Paul M

[MalcolmP]

52 minutes ago, MalcolmP said:

If I am reading vanBuitenen  correctly, http://astro.vanbuitenen.nl/neo/2024 MK

 

I was not ! I got my eyes xxed between the 28, 29 &30 lines travelling up the graph to the region of interest ! Shame because I had a clear night last night imaging TCrB at mag10.3/10.5ish and (2)Pallas. Oh dear, this dinosaur missed that one