Seeing the Mother of Mars

The Sun will be shining brightly on one of the largest asteroids later this month

On September 1, 1804, a German astronomer named Karl L. Harding noticed something in the night sky -- an asteroid, the third one ever discovered in the asteroid belt.

An area between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, the asteroid belt contains numerous asteroids, ranging in size from the dwarf planet Ceres, which is 950km in diameter, to objects the size of a dust particle.

Harding named his discovery Juno after the Roman goddess who was the wife of the chief god Jupiter, the mother of Mars and the protector of the state. Dented by numerous collisions with other asteroids, Juno is a tough rock, being the tenth largest asteroid.

And later this month, Juno will be in a perfect position to get some light from the Sun, making it relatively viewable. It will not have this kind of brightness until 2018.

"Those who get out to a dark, unpolluted sky will be able to spot the asteroid's silvery glint near the planet Uranus with a pair of binoculars," according to a NASA press release.

"Skywatchers with telescopes can probably see Juno from now until the end of the year, but it is most visible to binoculars in late September. On or before Sept. 21, look for Juno near midnight a few degrees east of the brighter glow of Uranus and in the constellation Pisces. It will look like a gray dot in the sky, and each night at the end of September, it will appear slightly more southwest of its location the night before. By Sept. 25, it will be closer to the constellation Aquarius and best seen before midnight."

GET INVOLVED

• Sign a petition to add the option for US taxpayers to contribute to NASA on the IRS 1040 tax form
• See what's in the sky tonight
• Download the new Google Earth 5.0, which now has an interactive map of the entire surface of Mars
• Buy a beginner telescope from the Discovery Channel store ($99.00)

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image: The asteroid Juno was photographed in 2003 with a special optics system on the Hooker telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory. The researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who took the picture used varying wavelengths of light as measured in nanometers, starting with cyan and going into the infrared. (credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)