It would take a pretty skilled telescope operator to track it, by the time they stepped away it would be out of the FOV.
Patrick does the right thing by letting the general public know that even
through a telescope, all that is visible is a tiny dot of light. Many think that they'll see a close-up, like a planetary disk in the eyepiece. They need to know in advance that even the world's largest telescopes only show asteroids such as this as a speck of light with no detail at all.
And unless it's moving very fast, they may not even be sure which speck in the FOV is the asteroid. A reticle would be of some use in these instances.
On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 10:59 PM, Patrick Wiggins <paw@wirelessbeehive.com>wrote:
Hi all,
A lady who lives near Ogden rang me today saying she wants to see 2012 DA14 as it makes its flyby on the 15th.
I told it it would not look like much but she'd still like to see it.
Is anyone here planning on trying to spot it?
Weather permitting I'll be trying to image it but she wants to see it through a telescope.
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