TOP TELESCOPE PICK:
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Sunday’s livestream is because of begin at 3 p.m. EST (2000 GMT) and can function knowledgeable commentary from Digital Telescope Mission founder Gianluca Masi alongside stay views of Andromeda and Eros taken from the group’s wide-field robotic telescopes in Manciano, Italy — climate allowing, after all.
“Having such an essential near-Earth asteroid simply a few levels away from the legendary Andromeda Galaxy (Messier 31) is a valuable alternative to share each the significance of those sort of minor planets and the great thing about our cosmic neighbor, the Messier 31 island-universe,” Masi informed House.com in an electronic mail.
In 1898, Eros grew to become the primary near-Earth asteroid ever found and was later visited by NASA’s NEAR (Close to Earth Asteroid Rendezvous) Shoemaker spacecraft. Upon reaching the article, this probe first orbited across the 20-mile-wide (33-kilometer-wide) physique then, on Feb. 12, 2001, carried out the primary asteroid touchdown in historical past.
Eros can be simply 37 million miles (60 million kilometers) from Earth when it passes inside two levels of Andromeda’s core on the night time of Nov. 30, whereas the huge spiral galaxy itself can be positioned a staggering 2.5 million light-years from our photo voltaic system.
“Due to its massive dimension, Eros will shine at round magnitude 10 for a number of weeks, making it simply observable even with a modest 60 mm telescope,” Masi wrote in a separate electronic mail to House.com.
Magnitude is the worth utilized by astronomers to measure the brightness of an object within the night time sky: The decrease the worth, the brighter the article.
Need to catch a glimpse of the wandering asteroid for your self? Each Eros and Andromeda may be discovered excessive above the jap horizon within the hours following sundown on Nov. 30. First find the constellations Cassiopeia and Andromeda utilizing a helpful starfinding astronomy app. Subsequent find the uppermost three stars and use them to level the best way to Andromeda, as proven within the finder chart above.
Make sure you take a look at our roundup of the greatest binoculars and telescopes for exploring the night time sky in 2025.
