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| 1998 WT24 movement in 35 minutes |
1998 WT24 is a large Near Earth Asteroid: it's 1km wide and comes within 5 moon-earth distance to us. I easily found it with an 8"/f6 Dob and 25mm eyepiece from my backyard at Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh. Its motion against background stars was obvious in one or two minutes. Switching to a 9mm eyepiece (about 130x power), I could perceive its position change every 5 or 6 seconds (no, I couldn't see it actually moving by staring at it). I estimated the asteroid to be around magnitude 9.5.
This plot shows 1998 WT24 changes position during 35 minutes. The numbers are hhmm (later I found my timing device was 2 minutes behind EST). The little circle with a cross is the predicted position at 2300. The large arc at right shows my field-of-view with the 25mm eyepiece. The grid covers RA 3h55m--4h, Dec 41--42 N.
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