The asteroid Vesta currently appears quite bright (for an asteroid) in the night sky. It’s bright enough to be seen with a pair of binoculars, or if you’re in a dark location you may be able to see it unaided.
The chart above shows tonight’s relative position of Vesta using Jupiter and Antares as guides. You’ll have to click the chart to see a larger, clearer view of Vesta. The good news for me is that it appears to be a few degrees north of Jupiter, so it should be mostly above the treetops behind my house.
Star-Hopping
Star-hopping is a method of finding dim objects (like an asteroid) by starting with bright objects and “hopping” with your binoculars from star to star until you find the target object. I’ve been suffering cloudy nights recently, so I haven’t actually tried to find Vesta yet, but from the chart it looks pretty easy to do.
Antares is the brightest unaided-view star near Vesta, so we’ll start there. Get a star chart that shows the location of Antares in the night sky. Sky and Telescope has a nice article on their site that includes a chart of Scorpius and Jupiter and more interesting details about Vesta. Antares rises in the southeast and moves higher and westward into the night. It’s the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius, although nearby Jupiter is even brighter. Once you have found Jupiter and Antares, you’re well on your way to Vesta.
Now let’s start hopping! Find Antares in your binoculars. Notice that it is a base vertex in a pentagon that can be easily seen in binoculars. North of the pentagon (and “up” in the star chart) there are three mag 4.2-4.5 stars (phi, chi, and psi ophiuchus) in a line pointing a couple degrees left of Vesta. Finally there’s a mag 5.6 star just left of Vesta, which is currently about 5.5 itself. Just remember the numbers five-three-two and you have the star-hops memorized!
Vesta is moving quickly to the west (to the right in the chart), so if you observe it several nights in a row you should notice the relative change in position.
I hope to get a chance to observe Vesta sometime this week.
