This Week’s Night Sky: See an Asteroid Pass and Meteors Peak
Also this week, two planets form a triangle with the moon and a star cluster goes into hiding.
Sky-watchers using binoculars and small telescopes should be able to pick up Pallas in the southeastern sky, shining at magnitude nine. It will be passing conveniently between the bright naked-eye star Enif and M15, a stunning globular star cluster that’s 33,000 light-years away.
Seen from Earth, Pallas will be positioned about three degrees northwest of Enif, which marks the nose of the constellation Pegasus, the mythical flying steed.
It will also be one degree southeast of the M15 cluster, equal to about two lunar disks apart. Through binoculars under dark skies, the cluster looks like a tiny fuzzy patch of light near Enif—akin to a pesky fly buzzing near the nose of the winged horse.
Pallas is just 318 miles (512 kilometers) wide,
