To those of you keeping an eye in the sky: http://www.spaceweather.com/
From spaceweather.com:
ASTEROID SIGHTING: In an age of CCD cameras and high-speed digital recorders, University of Colorado Prof. Richard Keen has done something unusual. He observed an asteroid flyby with nothing but optics and the human eye. On May 29th, newly-discovered asteroid 2012 KT42 passed closer to Earth than a geosynchronous satellite. "Bent over the eyepiece of my 12-inch telescope, I tracked the little space rock for 42 minutes," says Keen. "Along the way it brightened from magnitude 11.5 to 10.5, about a whole magnitude brighter than predicted. Aside from some meteorites I've held in my hands and other meteors flashing though the upper atmosphere, this is the closest astronomical object I've ever seen. According to the NASA ephemeris, 2012 KT42 was just 19158 km from my house when I last saw it--about the same as a plane flight to Australia."\
**Interestingly, the sun creates a partial eclipse of the asteroid, and then the asteroid transits the sun.
"Now, I have looked a bit into eclipses experienced by asteroids while approaching the Earth-Moon system, and I don't recall this ever happening before, so it's a first. So far no observations have been reported during the partial eclipse period, but it will be interesting to see how the brightness changes."
http://orbit.psi.edu/~tricaric/2012KT42.html
hope this was of interest to ya!
Replies
Wow this is very interesting. Many things are now happening in the skys. I think I will get a telescope. I am facinated with the sky and what is going on in the heavens. These are exciting times. Time for everyone to start looking up, we may be amazed what we see.