2007 TU24 - A Close Shave

Guys a heads up on a very close call on a Near Earth Asteroid.

On January 29th, 2008 at 08:38 asteroid 2007 TU24 is just 551,000kms from Earth (1.37 lunar distances). This asteroid is approximately 400m across. It is classified asd a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) by the minor planet center.

The good news for us is that this object will reach magnitude 10.5 as it whizzes by Earth and even the night before will be no fainter than mag +12.7. This is a rare opportunity to see an NEO visually and see it's motion against the background stars.

If you can image this object please do so. Don't worry if you can't do all the positional astrometry stuff. Here's what you can do.

Image the object and make note of the start and end time of the exposure to the nearest second. Ensure your time piece is synchronised with an atomic clock. See here for correct time.

www.time.gov/timezone.cgi?UTC/s/0/java

You should attempt to image without star trails but if you have tiny trails don't sweat too much. Don't image with too wide a field of view. Prime focus through a telescope is ideal. Make at least three images around 1 hour apart. Save your images as FITs or TIFs (not JPG's). With most DSLR's and any CCD camera a 30 second exposure will be more than enough to record this asteroid so no need for lenghty exposures.

One problem,

You won't be able to submit observations to the MPC without an observatory code. However this is still a very useful exercise and you will be rewarded with precise astrometric positions for the asteroid you recorded

So how do you find this asteroid? A good way is to use JPL's horizons web interface.

ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=2007%20TU24;orb=1

You can get the exact RA and DEC for any given instant. If you don't fancy that Here's an Hourly ephemeris for the night of the 28th and into the 29th. The format is;

Date/Time(UTC)-RA-DEC-MAG

I'll post some detailed charts later

2008-Jan-28-18:00 01 17 45.99 +22 39 10.0 12.2
2008-Jan-28-19:00 01 20 18.39 +24 34 22.1 12.07
2008-Jan-28-20:00 01 23 07.65 +26 35 46.9 11.94
2008-Jan-28-21:00 01 26 17.34 +28 43 32.2 11.81
2008-Jan-28-22:00 01 29 51.48 +30 57 44.1 11.68
2008-Jan-28-23:00 01 33 54.52 +33 18 25.6 11.55
2008-Jan-29-00:00 01 38 31.50 +35 45 35.0 11.42
2008-Jan-29-01:00 01 43 48.11 +38 19 04.3 11.29
2008-Jan-29-02:00 01 49 50.91 +40 58 35.9 11.16
2008-Jan-29-03:00 01 56 47.63 +43 43 40.0 11.04
2008-Jan-29-04:00 02 04 47.52 +46 33 30.1 10.92
2008-Jan-29-05:00 02 14 01.87 +49 26 59.9 10.8
2008-Jan-29-06:00 02 24 44.64 +52 22 39.3 10.7
2008-Jan-29-07:00 02 37 13.18 +55 18 30.8 10.6

So come on, what are you waiting for, get observing and do some real science. You never know you just might like chasing large rocks around the sky:)

As promised here's a finder chart for 2007 TU24.

The timeframe is 2007-01-28 18:00UT to 2007-01-29 06:00UT
Stars are shown to mag +7.5.

Crikey - that thing is certainly whizzing by! I'd be interested in giving this one a go. Exposures any longer than a few minutes will probably show the movement of the asteroid.

I just did some calcs and I noticed that around 10pm this baby is moving at 2.33" per second!! That should be enough to make its motion visible in real time at high magnifications.

At 21:33:52UT TU24 is within 3" of star TYC 1754-230-2 (mag 9.92 in pisces). It would be easy to see real time motion when this appulse occurs.

I just did some calcs and I noticed that around 10pm this baby is moving at 2.33" per second!! That should be enough to make its motion visible in real time at high magnifications.

Sweet. ED80 and a Canon 350D at the ready?

Here's a useful web site folks for PHAs ... select the close approach from a table and a plot of the path is generated. You can select your location.

hea-www.harvard.edu/~fine/Astro/flybys.cgi

John