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Asteroid 9 Metis will be well placed
for observation, lying in the constellation Gemini, well above
the horizon for much of the night. Regardless of your location,
Metis will reach its highest point in the
sky at around midnight, local time, an optimal positioning
that occurs when it makes its closest approach to the point in the sky
directly opposite to the Sun – an event termed opposition, the
exact moment of which will be 08:08 UTC. Since the Sun
reaches its greatest distance below the horizon at midnight, the point
opposite to it is highest in the sky at the same time.
At around the same time that Metis passes opposition, it also
makes its closest approach to the Earth – termed its perigee
– making it appear at its brightest in the night sky. This happens
because when Metis lies opposite to the Sun in the night sky, the
Solar System is lined up so that Metis, the Earth and the Sun lie
in a straight line with the Earth in the middle, on the same side of the Sun
as Metis. On this occasion, Metis will pass
within 1.138 AU of us, reaching a peak brightness of magnitude 8.2. Nonetheless,
even at its brightest, Metis is a faint object beyond the reach of
the naked eye or binoculars; a telescope of moderate aperture and a good star
chart are needed.
At the moment of opposition, Metis will lie at a declination
of +28°30' , and so will be seen to best advantage in the northern hemisphere; in fact, it will be unobservable from latitudes much south of 41°S.
The finder chart and ephemeris below indicate the path of
Metis around the time of its opposition; the ephemeris also provides estimates of the asteroid's apparent
magnitude.
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The exact position of Metis at the moment of opposition are as follows:
| Object |
Right Ascension |
Declination |
Constellation |
Magnitude |
| Asteroid 9 Metis |
06h51m24s |
+28°30'07" |
Gemini |
8.2 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.
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The following ephemeris describes the movement of Metis in the weeks around its opposition:
| DATE | RIGHT ASCENS | DECLINATION | approx| phase | solar | CONSTELLATION
| Year Mth Day | hour min sec | deg min sec | mag. | |distance|
| (0-1) (deg) |
|
| 2012 10 22 | 07 02 40 | +23 41 36 | 8.98 | 0.944 | 104.99 | Gemini
| 2012 11 01 | 07 11 27 | +23 59 56 | 8.82 | 0.950 | 113.00 | Gemini
| 2012 11 08 | 07 15 49 | +24 17 19 | 8.71 | 0.955 | 119.06 | Gemini
| 2012 11 15 | 07 18 30 | +24 39 19 | 8.61 | 0.962 | 125.52 | Gemini
| 2012 11 22 | 07 19 23 | +25 06 16 | 8.50 | 0.969 | 132.42 | Gemini
| 2012 12 01 | 07 17 44 | +25 47 50 | 8.38 | 0.979 | 141.92 | Gemini
| 2012 12 08 | 07 14 17 | +26 24 27 | 8.30 | 0.986 | 149.76 | Gemini
| 2012 12 15 | 07 09 05 | +27 03 00 | 8.24 | 0.992 | 157.92 | Gemini
| 2012 12 22 | 07 02 26 | +27 41 07 | 8.20 | 0.997 | 166.12 | Gemini
| 2013 01 01 | 06 51 28 | +28 29 55 | 8.19 | 1.000 | 174.43 | Gemini
| 2013 01 08 | 06 43 35 | +28 57 23 | 8.22 | 0.998 | 169.58 | Gemini
| 2013 01 15 | 06 36 18 | +29 18 03 | 8.27 | 0.995 | 161.61 | Auriga
| 2013 01 22 | 06 30 11 | +29 31 49 | 8.35 | 0.989 | 153.45 | Auriga
| 2013 02 01 | 06 24 18 | +29 41 09 | 8.48 | 0.980 | 142.24 | Auriga
| 2013 02 08 | 06 22 27 | +29 41 54 | 8.60 | 0.973 | 134.84 | Auriga
| 2013 02 15 | 06 22 32 | +29 39 02 | 8.71 | 0.966 | 127.87 | Auriga
| 2013 02 22 | 06 24 30 | +29 33 16 | 8.84 | 0.960 | 121.31 | Auriga
| 2013 03 01 | 06 28 12 | +29 25 06 | 8.96 | 0.955 | 115.14 | Auriga
| 2013 03 08 | 06 33 27 | +29 14 38 | 9.08 | 0.951 | 109.33 | Auriga
| 2013 03 15 | 06 40 05 | +29 01 49 | 9.20 | 0.948 | 103.84 | Gemini
|
| Ephemeris computed by Dominic Ford, 03 April 2013.
| Source
The circumstances of this event were computed from orbital elements made
available by Ted Bowell of the Lowell
Observatory. The conversion to geocentric coordinates was performed
using the position of the Earth recorded in the DE405
ephemeris published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
The star chart above shows the positions and magnitudes of stars as they
appear in the Tycho
catalogue. The data was reduced by the author and plotted using
PyXPlot. A gnomonic
projection of the sky has been used; celestial coordinates are indicated in
the J2000.0 coordinate system.
Image credit
© NASA/Galileo 1993. Pictured asteroid is 243 Ida.
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