Watch a Bright Asteroid from Your Backyard (Vesta)

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http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2011/07/29/night-sky-news-watch-a-bright-asteroid-from-your-backyard/

Night Sky News: Watch a Bright Asteroid from Your Backyard
Posted by Andrew Fazekas July 29, 2011

Hot on the heels of last months’ arrival of NASA’s spacecraft Dawn at asteroid Vesta, backyard skywatchers throughout August get a chance to see the space rock for themselves in its best and brightest apparition until 2018.

After a four year journey Dawn entered orbit around the 500 km wide asteroid in mid July and will remain at Vesta for a year. Circling the Sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter in the main asteroid belt, Vesta is the second largest asteroid known with an ancient battered surface that may hold clues to how the planets formed 4.5 billion years ago.

While Dawn is getting up close and personal, for us Earthlings Vesta looks like a very faint star-like object in in a sea of stars, visible to the naked eye but only from a dark location – like cottage country. For those stuck under light polluted city skies I recommend a pair of binoculars or small telescope.

Vesta officially reaches opposition – opposite in the sky from the Sun, – on August 5 and will be at its brightest at magnitude 5.6 around that date- the most brilliant any asteroid can technically ever get in our skies.

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Star charts with the article.