I am so sleepy right now. Can you blame me? My friends Jon, Greg and I stayed up until the first hint of dawn this morning blissfully hopping from one deep sky object to the next with our telescopes. The mosquitos robbed us of some of the pleasure, but I'm sure that memory will fade with time.
We looked at supernovas, nebulas, great balls of stars called globular clusters and even dropped in on the asteroid Vesta, now in the public eye with fresh closeup photos posted every few days on the Dawn website . Vesta was bright enough but challenging to see with the naked eye. Binoculars made it instantly easy. We were all a bit surprised at its distinctly yellow tint when viewed at low power through a telescope. The whole time, a modest sprinkling of meteors shot across the sky -- mostly southern Delta Aquarids and a couple early Perseids. I counted more than a dozen.
If you'd like to see Vesta with your own eyes, copy the updated map above and use it along with a pair of binoculars. The best time for Vesta viewing will be in the next week or two, when the 330-mile-diameter asteroid is closest to Earth and reaches its peak brightness of magnitude 5.7 on August 6. That's when it lines up with Earth on the other side of the sun in opposition.
Capricornus is low in the southeast around 11 p.m. but reaches a respectable height around midnight. Click the map above for a wide-angle version to navigate to Capricornus. For light from Vesta to reach our eyes, it currently has to travel 114 million miles, a feat accomplished in no more than 10 minutes!
