Weather permitting we are going to try to do a live webcast of the 2012 DA₁₄ close approach tonight. This will consist of periodically updated live images from a small telescope with a field of view of around 1 degree. We’ve not had much time to test this so it may or may not work for various reasons but you might like to keep an eye on the following page:

http://britastro.org/live/page.htm

If the weather cooperates the first live images should appear around 20:10 as the object rises above my local horizon. At that time it will be around magnitude 7.5 and moving at around 41 arcsec/sec.

19:15 – Currently the sky here in Chelmsford is totally cloud covered and so the live webcast is unlikely to show much early on. The forecast for later this evening is a bit better.

20:15 – 2012 DA₁₄ is now clear of my horizon obstructions but it is still cloudy here. It may clear later.

22:10 – Still cloudy in Essex but Denis Buczynski has obtained a nice image from Tarbatness.

2012 DA14 from NE Scotland

Unfortunately, the sky never cleared in Chelmsford so we had nothing to show during the webcast. We’ll try again in the future when another interesting astronomical event takes place.