GROUND TELESCOPES FIND WHERE ELON MUSK PARKED HIS CAR

For those of you who have not been living in a cave since Last Tuesday (Feb 6th), feel free to skip ahead. For those of you who have been in a cave or jail this past week: last Tuesday, SpaceX launched their "Dragon Heavy" rocket - the most powerful rocket ever to be launched.  The punchline: the payload for this test was Elon Musk's own Tesla convertible roadster. And with an astronaut dummy behind the wheel. And it is now careening its way toward the Asteroid Belt (but may not actually make it there).

Meanwhile, Astronomers from the "Virtual Telescope Project" and the Tenagra Observatory in Arizona located Musk's convertible last Thursday...



And someone at NASA/JPL has generated an "ephemeris" (a chart for finding something moving through space) for the SpaceX Roadster, if you want to look for it with your own telescope [set the ephemeris "Target Body" to "SpaceX Roadster" and hit "Generate Ephemeris"]. Be warned: the roadster is at a very faint magnitude (17.25) as of this posting and getting smaller and fainter every day. Tiny Pluto is currently at magnitude 14.34, so if you can't see Pluto with your telescope, don't bother looking for the Tesla and do something better with your evening.       

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