Saturday, March 31, 2007
Asteroid 2006 VV2 zooms by tonight
The asteroid 2006 VV2 will zoom past Earth tonight, it will be closest in the early hours of the morning of April 1 though. This will be visible in small telescopes and very high power binoculars (not 10x50's sadly). The map to the left shows the path of the asteroid (the northern horizon is shown as of 8:00 pm ACST, click to enlarge map) and the map below shows a high power view, with stars to magnitude 10 shown.The 2 km long rock will be moving sufficiently fast you can see it move in telescopic view. The asteroid will come within 2 million kilometers at closest approach.
High resoultion map of the asteroids path (click to enlarge), the star labled alpha is Regulus, alpha Leonis. Oribital elements may be downloaded here.# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 12:57 pm 
Click to read about or order
Click to read about or order
Click to read about or order
Click to read about or order
