Astronomy

I've got clear skies where I'm at, and I'm ready to try and cross some things off my observation list.

Some targets I'm planning on trying to hit:

• M79 (this one's been a real PITA, tried about five times and finally just saw a fuzzy little cloud last time I looked)
• NGC 2419: I think this one's also going to be a huge PITA to starhop to, but I'm up to the challenge.
• Rosette Nebula
• M108
• M97: M108 and M97 seem like they shouldn't be too hard to starhop to, I guess we'll find out.
• M105: tried to find the Leo triplet once or twice before and got nowhere, but I was on more of a time crunch. I'm hoping with a slower pace and Leo being higher in the sky, I'll be able to pin it down.
• I always like to peek at Jupiter, and I'll probably snag a look at Trapezium while I can.

Known Conditions:

• 12" 1520mm f/5 manual dob
• low mag wide aperture binoculars
• predicted clear skies
• ClearDarkSky says Bortle 6 but I think it's closer to 5. In either case, not great, but I've still managed to catch some faint fuzzies from here.
• I'm going to be using a combination of prepping with Stellarium and a star chart to try and augment my star-hopping. I'll be using an 8x50 RACI to jump from bright naked-eye targets to less visible ones, and then a 2x Barlow/30mm wide field eyepiece to nudge onto target.

Anybody else planning any observing? What's your list look like?

Based on the latest estimate from NASA, there is now just a 0.0039 percent chance. Put another way, the odds of impact are 1 in 26,000.

However, there is something that we should all take away from this experience.

Astronomers will find a lot more of these

City-killer asteroids the size of 2024 YR4 are fairly common in the inner Solar System. This asteroid was likely somewhere between 40 and 100 meters across, which is large enough to cause regional destruction on the planet, but small enough to be difficult to find with most telescopes. However, we should expect to find more of them in the coming years.

"An object the size of YR4 passes harmlessly through the Earth-Moon neighborhood as frequently as a few times per year," Richard Binzel, one of the world's leading asteroid experts and a professor of planetary sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Ars. "The YR4 episode is just the beginning for astronomers gaining the capability to see these objects before they come calling through our neck of the woods."

These new capabilities include powerful telescopes, some of which are expressly designed to find near-Earth hazards.

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, formerly known as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, is nearing completion in Chile. Among its primary scientific objectives is finding small asteroids near Earth, and it is likely to find many. A little more than two years from now, the NEO Surveyor is scheduled to launch to a Sun-Earth Lagrange point. This NASA-backed instrument will survey the Solar System for threats to Earth. Finally, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope due to launch in 2027 will not look directly for asteroids, but also is likely to find threats to Earth.

With all of these tools coming online, astronomers believe we are likely to find 10 or even 100 times more objects like 2024 YR4.