The Asteroid Belt

[Space Oddity6]

Hi all,

This may be a ridiculously stupid question but bear with me as I'm the noob of all noobs but is it possible to see the asteroid belt through your everyday telescope or are the rocks just too small and far away?

I'm guessing the space telescopes and the observatories on Earth could pick up the Belt but was just wondering if it's possible.

[Earl]

Although its refered to as a belt, from what i know there is not a "Empire Strikes Back" asteroid field type affair as that would reflect a fair bit of light, there maybe a few Larger Asteroids Viewable with the right gear in Dark Skies, Stellarium might show a few.

[John]

Some of the larger asteroids such as Ceres, Pallas, Vesta etc are visible in small scopes I believe if you know where and when to look. They look like faint stars but, over a succession of nights, can be seen to move against the background stars.

If you wan't to see one really close up pop into the Natural History Museum and check out their meteorite collection - some are believed likely to have come from Vesta including the North African fall in 1931 at Tatahouine (really !).

[Ags]

Looking at something that looks just like a faint star does not sound very interesting to me... But occasionally an asteroid passes in front of a star - I'd like to see that!

[brantuk]

You can certainly see shooting stars (metorites) every night, and there's also a comet going past a the moment (McNought). Grab a copy of Sky At Night to find out where it is

[lukebl]

... But occasionally an asteroid passes in front of a star - I'd like to see that!

Actually, that happens quite often (several times a day), although it's usually only a faint star and only visible along a very narrow band on the earth. See here: Asteroid Occultation Predictions (Current). They're not that impressive. If the asteroid is really faint, all that happens is the star blinks out for a few seconds. If the asteroid is closer in brightness to the star, they just get closer and closer together, and the moment of occultation there is a brief dip in their combined magnitudes.

On 7th July, 15th magnitude asteroid Rockefellia occults a 3.9 magnitude star for 4.7 seconds, visible in Central Africa, so that might be worth seeing.

[John]

Looking at something that looks just like a faint star does not sound very interesting to me... But occasionally an asteroid passes in front of a star - I'd like to see that!

Lots of astro objects are quite unspectacular to view through the sort of scopes the average amateur owns - I find it's the knowledge of what you are looking at, whether it's a faint star-like object or a faint patch of light, that makes it exciting.

Saturns moon Enceladus is a good example - just a tiny, faint pinpoint of light through the scope but when you realise it's just 500 km in diameter, around 1,300,000,000 kilometers away from Earth and has the highest albedo of any solar system body then that tiny point of light takes on a whole new fascination