December 10, 11, & 12. Not a particularly close pass nor fast (20"/min). But may be magnitude 12 for many hours on the mornings of December 10 & 11, Slightly fainter on 12th. Closest after sunrise morning of Dec. 11. Stays high in the north on 10th, 11th & 12th in predawn hours. No Moon. This rock is ~1,000' diameter!

Discovered 1981 Sept. 30 – Siding Spring Observatory  Orbit Uncertainty = 0. Over 700 observations since discovery. Last observation on 2021 11 02.86025 by Kuban State University Astrophysical Observatory.

The International Asteroid Warning Network will conduct a campaign to check the accuracy of the observation times reported by asteroid observers. They will be using the close pass of 2019 XS next week. Close pass for me is at 21:47:05CST November 8 far below my SE horizon. Best viewing time for me is 24 hours later when the rock is high, brighter due to % illumination but farther away (2.8LD vs 1.5LD).  Details can be found at:

https://iawn.net/obscamp/2019XS/

I was wondering if there is a way to plot in an IA the positions of a comet or asteroid of the same name from different element sources (MPC, Bowell's ASTORB & JPL). Well, maybe not JPL as ST does not allow MP imports from there. Mostly to see how the positions differ in the real sky. The majority of software only makes available singles sources for an asteroid of comet element set. I noticed that SkyTools 4v has several different sources for the elements.

When I try to sort an observing list I get this:

"Column sorting disabled for presorted Observing Plans"  It effects every observing list I have.

I've never purposely created an "observing plan". I don't know how I got here and don't know how to get back.

How do I restore normal sort functions?

I've been interested in observing this crescent moons since the late 80s. I was looking at adding SkyTools to my observing toolkit for those planning sessions. How do I get the Apparent Data in the Object Info to feed the refracted/apparent altitude instead of the true altitude? And the Interactive Atlas view to show refracted location?

These thin crescent moons are generally located near the horizon, anywhere from 14° (easy) to only 1° (not so easy). Also, the crescent might have a very small elongation from the Sun and under 1% illumination.

Any hints on setting these up within the Interactive Atlas would be appreciated. I generally use my 10x70 binoculars to hunt these while the Sun is down ~4° - works good from a lot of experience. I'm working to incorporated ST4v into the planning of future hunts.

For the southern hemisphere & possibly Hawaii the minor planet 2021 UW1 will make a close approach on the evening of Oct 30 ~2300. The Interactive Atlas chart showing the path of the MP is attached below as is the Observing List that contains info about the pass.

Hopefully someone will be able to look for it,

Phil S.

What is the procedure to get info on a star at the center of an open cluster? I tried the zoom but still get the info on the open cluster unless zoomed in very deep where only the star is visible on the IA. Is that the norm?

We missed another fast mover on the evening of 24 Oct 2021 @2300 EDT. 2021 UA1 was calculated to be moving at 2.95°/sec through Cepheus. Here's a chart in the IA: [attachment=2083]

It's moving so fast that ST4 had to include the time to the second on the tick marks & the whole text string didn't fit on the label . What's shown as 2h should be 22h. Minimum Re was 11.1k km.

The osculating elements were downloaded from the MPC's NEAs at Today's Epoch using ST4v on Oct 26.

Talk about a close shave.

Phil S.

This is a list of close approaches that Gideon van Buitenen does over the next 90 days. I just ran into it although I've been using Gideon's elements page for a few years. Nice to have such info at fingertips.

http://astro.vanbuitenen.nl/neos

Small rock, very close pass!

Although cloudy here last night, this whizzer, small rock got caught by the Mt. Lemmon Survey team @ 2021 10 26.092556 UT at mag 21. Between 21:00 & 22:00CDT last night, it would have become near visible moving ~7.5'/m in my SE sky (most light polluted) up ~40° in a moonless sky. Tiny rock!! Close approach to my yard came ~2am this morning low in the south with heavy (64%) moon interference 81° away in the NE. Moving 17.2'/min! Distance = ~70,000Km. Did not know of it until after pass. I don't feel badly as it was cloudy here in SE Texas.