Asteroid 3 Juno on May 18, 2007
by Vern on May.18, 2007, under Asteroids, Astronomy
3 Juno is among the largest asteroids (tenth in size) at 149 miles in diameter (240 km). It orbits the Sun in about 4.36 years and is currently about 2.3985 AU distant from Earth. According to the ephemeris its current brightness is 10.4.
Images are from last evening, May 17 about 20 minutes before midnight and another 18 minutes after. Telescope was a Celestron Nexstar11 with F3.3 focal reducer. A Stellacam II video camera used for capture at 128 integration (4 sec), medium gamma setting, and 9/14 gain. Sky was mostly cloudless, 0-5 mph wind, temperature 53°F, transparency was good though some haze was apparent, and turbulence 5/10. Location was light polluted Louisville, CO.
5 comments for this entry:
May 19th, 2007 on 4:41 pm
What area of the sky can Juno be seen?.Not that it would help me out,as we are under a heavy cloud cover.Given it’s size,a +10 mag is still really bright for a asteroid?!.Congrats,it is a awesome shot!.I will be on vacation the second weel of June and would love to get a shot of this asteroid.HAHAHAHA,actually,I would like to get a shot of ANY asteroid!.
Andrew
May 21st, 2007 on 10:39 am
Thanks Andrew,
Asteroid 3 Juno is in constellation Virgo, currently about 2 degrees northeast of Auva or Delta Virgo,in the top “Y” arm.
The easiest one is asteroid 4 Vesta which is magnitude 5.6 in constellation Ophiuchus. See finder chart at http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/feature_stories/images/Vesta_May_300.jpg
January 9th, 2008 on 2:35 pm
Hi Vern
Do you know of anywhere I can find out how long Juno spends in each zodiac sign? I assume if it has an elliptical orbit it will differ.I need to check for patterns over 30 years and wonder if it has a consistent repeating pattern for each sign over time or if the long and short stays ’slip’ gradually forward or backward into different signs.
I tried basic astronomy books and a number os sites, which all give similar general information on asteroids but nothing on the orbits except their total length. I don’t want to hand count and list from an ephemeris over 30 odd years.
Thanks and best wishes – keep being nuts
Karon. England
January 9th, 2008 on 3:12 pm
Hi Karon,
Juno spends most of 2008 in constellation Ophiuchus except for a brief time from about March 1st to March 20 when it is in constellation Serpens Cauda. I don’t know of any publication that lists which constellation a particular asteroid is in, probably because there are so many asteroids! You might try downloading the free astronomy program “Cartes du Ciel” from http://www.stargazing.net/astropc/. The program lets you select and track different solar system objects, including the asteroid Juno. Put the program in the “Polar Projection” mode and then turn on constellation boundaries. You can then set the animation to step forward at various rates. You could then quite quickly determine what constellation the asteroid is passing through.
January 11th, 2008 on 5:48 am
Many thanks Vern. I will certainly check out the site you give. I passed your site details on to an e mail friend in China, who has his own astronomer friend in the U.S. The latter took a beautiful image of a recent eclipse from Arizona.