Thursday, October 08, 2026
Seeing Vesta at Opposition (12 October 2026)
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| Eastern horizon on the evening of Monday, October 12 as seen from Adelaide at 20:54 ACDST, 90 minutes after sunset (click to embiggen). Saturn is the brightest object above the eastern horizon. The asteroid Vesta is at opposition and 1s easily visible in binoculars on the 12th. unfortunately there are no bright guide stars to easily get to it. The insets shows the telescopic view of Saturn and the binocular view of Vesta at this time. Similar views will be seen elsewhere in Australia at the equivalent local time | Vesta last night taken on my Samsung S24 in astrophoto mode. 5x zoom, 2 minutes exposure. Vesta comes to opposition on Monday the 12th. The Guide stars theta (π) Ceti and Zeta π» Ceti, are indicated along with Vesta and HIP 8230.(click to embiggen) |
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| Black and white binocular chart suitable for printing showing the movement of 4 Vesta over October. The large circle represents the field of view of 10x50 binoculars. Saturn and the Guide stars theta (π) Ceti and Zeta π» Ceti, are indicated along with Vesta, HIP 7999 and HIP 8230.Click to embiggen and print. Use the horizon chart to the left for orientation first. Use the chart above to orient yourself to get to the guide stars. | Black and white binocular chart suitable for printing showing the movement of 4 Vesta over October. Guide stars are indicated. The large circle represents the field of view of 10x50 binoculars. Click to embiggen and print. Use the horizon chart to the left for orientation first. |
The Asteroid 4 Vesta is one of the iconic minor planets, and
one of two orbited by the Dawn spacecraft. At favorable
oppositions Vesta is bright enough to be seen with the unaided eye under dark
sky conditions. This year it only gets to magnitude 6.5 making it binocular only. It will be easily visible in binoculars and small telescopes even under suburban skies.
This year Monday, October 12 is a reasonable opposition of Vesta, when it will
reach a magnitude of 6.5 at its brightest with no Moon interference and few reasonable guide stars.
Vesta is not far from Saturn, roughly between and below the bright stars moderately bright stars π Ceti and π» Ceti, Vesta is within 1-2 binocular widths of π Ceti. From tonight it is near a small distinct asterism of dim stars, then moves progressively towards an imaginary line between Saturn and π Ceti, see the charts above. Vesta's movement from night to night is easily seen.
Finding Vesta with the back and white charts should be easy. Print them out and use with a red-light torch (or a standard torch with red cellophane over it) so as to not disturb your night vision.
The waxing Moon will interfere later in the month, but now there is no Moon interference up to opposition allowing Vesta and its guide stars to be fairly easily seen in binoculars.
The waxing Moon will interfere later in the month, but now there is no Moon interference up to opposition allowing Vesta and its guide stars to be fairly easily seen in binoculars.
Labels: 4 Vesta, Asteroid, binocular
# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 6:12 pm 
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