A pair of photos showing the motion of minor planet (10047) Davidchapman among the stars of Cancer over 5 hours. The bright star is at 9th magnitude. Davidchapman is dim at 17th magnitude and a little eccentric, but is well-behaved (i.e. it will never collide with Earth).

The asteroid is 1.5 times as far away as the Sun, but in the opposite direction. In fact, it will be at “opposition” in a couple of weeks. It won’t get much brighter. It moves about 15 minutes of arc from night to night, about half the Moon’s apparent size.

These are cropped images requested from Ralph, the robotic telescope at Burke-Gaffney Observatory in Halifax.

0.6 m Planewave robotic telescope at Burke-Gaffney Observatory, Halifax, with SBIG STXL-11002, exposure 5 minutes.

Cropped and adjusted for contrast.