Further to my blog about viewing Vesta (which reached opposition a couple of days ago), I thought I take a photograph using a standard digital camera of the star field with Vesta in it to show how easy it is to see an asteroid. My camera turned out to have focus ‘issues’ so I a good friend of mine Tony Surma-Hawes came to the rescue.
As an aside, I observed Vesta over the last two nights. I found it easily on the first night using my binoculars and this chart on Sky & Telescope’s website. I was fairly confident that I had found it on the first night but had a look on the second night just to check that I had found the right star (which is all Vesta looks like to the unaided eye). My confirmation came because Vesta had moved slightly compared to the other stars.
Update (8 August 2011): Tony sent me a further image taken last night of Vesta. He has combined both images (in a insert) to show how easy it is to see that Vesta has moved relative to the background stars between 5 and 7 August 2011.
