News

Up until only a few decades ago, every planet we knew existed in the Universe as well as all asteroids and comets, orbited the Sun. Since the first planet outside the Solar System orbiting another main-sequence star was made in 1995 - or Exoplanet - was confirmed , there been some 5,470 exoplanets found. Exoplanets have been found in a bewildering array of sizes, host star types and star system configurations. (If you're interested on keep track of the numbers of Exoplanets, the current count can be found at the NASA Exoplanet site here.) These have been discovered using a wide variety of methods, both here on the ground or using space-based instruments. Exoplanets are generally discovered by indirect means, IE the effect they have on their host star. Some were found via the light dip of the host star as the Exoplanet transits in front of it, others by the wobble the orbiting planets caused the star, variations Exoplanets cause to variable stars and other techniques. Even the arrangement of Exoplanets varies greatly. The original theories of rocky planets being close to the star and gas giants being on the edges of a star system quickly went out the windows as large, gas giants in orbits close to their host star were discovered in great numbers. It's looking like the configuration of the Solar System - rocky planets in near the host star and all gas giants in the outer regions - might be the least common of all (Read more here.) (One quick point though. I often get asked if you can see Exoplanets in a telescope. The short is answer is NO.) But all Exoplanet discoveries until recently had one thing in common - they were in orbit around a host star. Could there be planets in the Milky Way that aren't in orbit around a host star? Could there be Rogue planets in the Milky Way? Even if the answer is "yes", they might be tricky to detect as Exoplanets are identified by the effects on their host star, how could planets without a star be found? Why would a planet go Rogue? Astronomers have long proposed the idea of a Rogue Planet. This is a planet that is travelling through the Milky Way on its own and not in orbit around a host star.  There's a number of ways a planet could end up like this. It might achieve escape velocity in the star system where it was formed by gravitational interactions with other planets in the same system. In other words, it could get "flung"" put of its star system.  Planets form out of the interstellar materials that are attracted by gravity to form stars. The same process could occur with enough rocky materials bound together by gravity away from star formation. (There's some conjecture as to whether extremely low mass Rogue planets could even form on their own in this way.) How could a Rogue Planet be found? With no host star, Rogue planets cannot be observed using the indirect detection methods mentioned above. They're also too far away from any star to reflect light from it. (This is how was see Jupiter and Saturn in our own Solar System. We see the light of the Sun reflected off them.) There's no light coming from Rogue Planets. There's also nothing nearby to effect so we can't observe their influence on a nearby body. Rather, astronomers look for events called gravitational microlensing. The minute effect the gravity of an object in the foreground has on the space around it, bending space and effecting the path of the light of a star behind it. This bending of light around objects was proposed by Albert Einstein at the start of the 20th century.  Astronomers observe a tiny warping in the light from stars. By analysing these results, it's possible to detect whether a body such as a Rogue planet has passed in front of the star, possibly even at vast distances from it. Only a handful of Rogue planets have been confirmed compared to the number of Exoplanets, including a group of 70 discovered by ESO which was announced last year. Artist’s impression shows an example of a rogue planet with the Rho Ophiuchi cloud Much like Exoplanets which are though to exist around most stars, it's estimated Rogue planets are travelling through the Solar System in enormous numbers. "We estimate that our galaxy is home to 20 times more rogue planets than stars – trillions of worlds wandering alone,” said David Bennett, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. This means that the number of Rogue planets vastly the outnumber the planets that orbit stars. This points to planetary systems forming around stars more likely to eject planets than keeping them in orbit around them. The upcoming NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, due for launch in 2027, might even be locate approx. 400 Earth-sized Rogue planets, with two candidates already discovered. “We found that Earth-size rogues are more common than more massive ones,” Sumi said. “The difference in star-bound and free-floating planets’ average masses holds a key to understanding planetary formation mechanisms.” You can read more about what the new space telescope might find here. Do we have direct observation of bodies are travelling through the Solar System that aren't attached to a star? We sure do as three interstellar bodies have been detected in the Solar System. Discovered in 2017, "Oumuamua" cruised through the inner Solar System and is now on the way back out towards deep-space. Interstellar comet "Borisov" disintegrated as it went around the Sun in 2020 and an interstellar meteor with the funky name of CNEOS 2014-01-08 hit the Earth in 2014. (There's a controversial effort underway to recover fragments of this meteor from the ocean floor off the coast of New Guinea.) As always, there's so much to discover in our Universe! Cheers, Earl White BINTEL July 20th July 2023

The arc of the Milky Way above our heads at night has been seen and recorded for as long as humans have existed. We see the Milky Way in visible light, but much else can be revealed beyond this. Astronomers in recent decades have begun to observe the Milky Way in a wide range of other wavelengths - radio waves, infrared, ultraviolet even gamma rays. Announced this month was a map of the Milky Way not by light, but by subatomic particles called Neutrinos. What's a Neutrino? A Neutrino is a subatomic particle that's found in vast numbers throughout the Universe and created by a variety of processes. They don't have any electrical charge, have miniscule masses close to zero, and hardly interact with matter. This means that while they're constantly zipping around and through us and everything that surrounds us, they're extremely hard to detect. Most of the Neutrinos streaming through us come from either the Sun or our atmosphere. However, a tiny number moving at a higher speed arrive from outside the Solar System. Detecting Neutrinos As Neutrinos are so hard to detect, a unique observatory was built in the Antarctic. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a huge facility with some 5,160 sensors in a cubic array one kilometer on each side, buried deep in the ice at the South Pole. IceCube neutrino detector's aboveground lab. Image via YUYA MAKINO, ICECUBE/NSF The detectors located at IceCube are shielded as much as possible from the Sun during winter months and other sources of radiation.  Occasionally Neutrinos will strike the nucleus of atoms in the water molecules in the dense polar ice and break them down into a series of sort lived, subatomic particles, some of which will emit a form of light called Cherenkov radiation.  (This is the same process that gives pools of water surrounding nuclear reactors their blueish glow.) Since starting operations in 2011, about a million Neutrino observations have been recorded by IceCube.  Some of these detections leave tracks that can be analysed and used to point back to where they originated. Others, with much higher velocities sometimes caused "Cascade Events" where they kicked off other processes. These are harder to establish where they originate from. Their usefulness for Astronomy was limited Now Astronomers are using AI networks to scour through these events to establish where these Neutrinos have arrived from. Physicist Naoko Kurahashi Neilson of Drexel University in Philadelphia and her team used Neutrinos to map the Milky Way for the first time in something other than light. “When I first joined IceCube,” Professor Kurahashi Neilson commented, “I used to do air quotes” when using the phrase neutrino astronomy. “I don’t do that anymore.… I don’t have to because we’re starting to resolve things” in neutrino images that resemble the astronomical images from other telescopes." The Milky Way as seen in Neutrinos We have good views of the Milky Way in visible light. Why do we need this? The very nature of Neutrinos is the reason they offer new and unique views of our local galaxy. Much of the Milky Way is hidden from us by interstellar gas and dust. While telescopes sensitive to different wavelengths of light such as Infrared help get around this, Neutrinos can pass through hundreds of thousands of light years of space unimpeded - and bringing with them information about where they were formed. What's next? As always in Astronomy, new telescopes, tools or techniques bring new knowledge and discoveries.  IceCube itself is undergoing a massive in what is simply called IceCube GEN2 (read about it here) Neutrino Astronomy is a very new field, but one that's opening up new ways to look at the Universe. Cheers, Earl White BINTEL 7th July 2023

A team of Astronomers from across the globe, The NANOGrav collaboration, this week announced they'd observed a faint sign of a background signal or "hum" of Gravitational Waves that's spread through the Universe. What's a Gravitational Wave? Gravitational Waves are ripples in space and time caused by the acceleration of massive objects. These move away or "propagate" in all directions from their source at the speed of light. They contain information about the event that caused them and transport energy, in a similar way electromagnetic radiation or light does. They'd been proposed by a number of people but were formally described by Albert Einstein as part of his Theory of General Relativity. Gravitational Waves shrink and then expand the very space they move through. When did we first detect Gravitational Waves? There'd been an indirect detection prior to the first direct detection in 2015 by the LIGO gravitational wave detector, for which the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded. This event was caused by the collision of two Black Holes, some 1.3 billion light years from Earth. If the very fabric of space around me is moving, why can't I feel it? While events that cause Gravitational Waves are extremely energetic, this energy is propagated outwards and hard to detect after what could be millions of years of travel. The frequency of these waves is so low and the wavelength so incredibly long, they're beyond our ability to experience them directly. Artist's impression of an array of pulsars being affected by gravitational waves produced by orbiting super massive black holes in a faraway galaxy (Image credit: Aurore Simonnet for the NANOGrav Collaboration) How was the recent discovery made and how long did it take to gather all the data? Rather than looking for individual Gravitational Wave events, the NANOGrav team collected data from a number of "cosmic clocks" to detect the ripples of space on vast scale. Spread throughout galaxies are quickly spinning neutron stars called Pulsars. These are in the final stages of stellar evolution, leftovers after massive stars explode in Supernova events. Their rotating cores compress and shrink under their gravity and spin faster and faster. Think of an ice skater bringing their arms and legs in towards their body to twirl faster. In the case of Pulsars, they spin with extremely regular times of milliseconds to seconds. Their rate of spin will change, but it will be over enormous spans of time. If their magnetic "beam" points towards us, we see Pulsars as some of the most accurate timekeeping devices in the Universe. Astronomers have been studying and cataloging Pulsars for decades, with Murriyang - The CSIRO Radio Telescope outside of Parkes NSW - being a key facility in providing these Pulsar timing observations. Image via Alex Cherne Using a network of radio telescopes around the world, 67 different pulsars were observed for 15 years. NANOGrav found small, but measurable changes to the distances from Earth to these Pulsars caused by Gravitational Waves. The Universe is a noisy place at all frequencies of light, so even with the accuracy of Pulsar timing the NANOGrav was unable to extract individual events, but instead found the long-theorised "hum" of Gravitational Waves that are spread throughout the Universe - and this is not something "out there" either. Gravitational Waves are passing through everything around us and even through our bodies! What causes Gravitational Waves? It's likely the Gravitational Waves that makeup the background hum detected by the NANOGrav team was caused by the merger of Black Holes. A number of these mergers since the beginning of the Universe- possibly in the billions - send Gravitational Waves out into space, they combine and effect space around us. “It’s like a choir, with all these supermassive black hole pairs chiming in at different frequencies,” Chiara Mingarelli, a NANOGrav scientist who worked on the new findings, said. “This is the first-ever evidence for the gravitational wave background. We’ve opened a new window of observation on the universe.” Can astronomers observe using Gravitational Waves? Very likely!  As Gravitational Wave are changes in the fabric or space and time itself, they're not effected by the presence of matter. This means the inner workings of Super Massive Black Holes, or certain eras of the early history of the Universe which is opaque to the wavelengths of lights astronomers use are "visible" to Gravitational Wave. Every time Astronomers have worked out ways to observe the Universe - whether it's been in radio wave, infrared or ultraviolet etc - amazing new discoveries follow. Gravitational Waves will no doubt provide another way to learn about the space we live in. Cheers, Earl White BINTEL 29th June 2023    

NASA this week announced that further study of data received from the Cassini mission to Saturn has revealed the presence of phosphorous on its moon, Enceladus. Hi resolution image of Enceladus showing its "tiger stripes"  (via NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute) Despite its vast distance from Sun and next to no atmosphere, Enceladus is known to have a planet wide water ocean about 10km deep under an icecap that is some 30 to 50 kilometres thick. (For comparison, oceans on the Earth average just under four kilometres deep with the deepest point being around eleven kilometres.) It's thought the water on Enceladus is kept from freezing over entirely by heating from by tidal interactions as it orbits Saturn. The ocean under the ice on Enceladus was confirmed by the discovery that the rocky core of the moon "wobbled" slightly in its ocean underneath the solid icecap. Cracks in the ice on the surface of Enceladus allow plumes of vapor and ice and ice to escape into space. Methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen - ingredients for amino acids - embedded into ice particles had previously been observed.  These feed into Saturn's E ring, part of the spectacular system of rings surrounding Saturn. Plumes of material escaping into space from the "tiger stripes" on Enceladus. (Image via NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute) Now researchers have further analysed the particles in Saturn's E ring that were ejected from Enceladus.  They found these particles contain large amounts of sodium phosphates in their samples. Sodium phosphates are molecules of chemically bound sodium, oxygen, hydrogen, and phosphorus.  The key discovery was the presence of phosphorus. This is not found in great quantities in life on Earth unlike elements such as carbon, but it is critical for life processes to take place. Now it's been found on Enceladus, all the "building blocks" of life have now been confirmed on this ocean world. Further work found that the phosphorus concentrations on Enceladus are at least one hundred times that of Earth's oceans. A researcher Christopher Glein, a planetary scientist and geochemist at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas said " “This key ingredient could be abundant enough to potentially support life in Enceladus’ ocean; this is a stunning discovery for astrobiology.” It's very important to note that while this discovery points to the key ingredients for life are found on Enceladus and other water worlds in the Solar System, this does not mean that life itself or any traces of previous life processes have been discovered. “Having the ingredients is necessary, but they may not be sufficient for an extraterrestrial environment to host life. Whether life could have originated in Enceladus’ ocean remains an open question.” continued Glein. Are we going to check out Enceladus further? Yes! Further research on the data obtained from Cassini will be ongoing. Space-based telescopes like the JWST will also study the Saturn system in more detail. NASA has approved the Enceladus Explorer (EnEx) mission which will orbit and land on the icy moon. This won't happen until 2050. Its main science objectives are: To search for evidence of life. To obtain geochemical and geophysical context for life detection experiments. It will be a long wait, but given the discoveries made so far, the mission might produce some stunning results! Cheers, Earl White BINTEL 16th June 2023    

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory reached a major construction recently. The primary instrument at this revolutionary facility is called the Simonyi Survey Telescope. The massive telescope mount and surrounding structure is ready to be fitted with a "dummy" full size replica of its 8.4m mirror and 32000-megapixel camera and other gear. This will allow full testing and shake down of the mechanical side of the telescope before its main mirror and remarkable camera are installed. Astronomers are really excited about this new observatory and expect it will advance our understanding of the early formation and structure of the Universe as well as observing events in the Solar System. There's already a number of 8m class telescopes operating across the world. So why is the Simonyi Survey Telescope at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory so different? The telescope has an extremely low centre of gravity and short focal ratio. These combine to make is far manoeuvrable than other large professional telescopes. It can quickly move to different parts of the sky and begin imaging within seconds - probably faster than most amateur telescopes. The 32000-megapixel camera can not only capture more of the sky and in more detail than other comparable telescopes, but the telescope can also produce some 200,000 images per year or nearly 1.3 petabytes of uncompressed data. These all combine to enable the Simonyi Survey Telescope to image the entire night sky from its location every 2-3 nights. Why the rush? Traditional all-sky surveys take several years to complete. Long term surveys across the world - including here in Australia - have helped researchers make and discover billions of stars and galaxies in multiple wavelengths of light. The Universe doesn't seem to be going anywhere in a hurry, so we do we need large observatories that can complete a major sky survey every few nights? What we're coming to realise is that the Universe is far from static! It changes from night to night and often on a short timeframe too. Some of these changes are well known and predictable. Examples of these includes Solar System objects as they move around the Sun. Many variable stars have a predictable rise and fall in their light output. Others are less regular. There are also sudden changes. These include events like the recent Supernova explosion in galaxy M10, Other events we're only just learning about. Mergers of Neutron stars, black holes interacting with stars and gases plus lots more! Discovering new objects and studying the movement of vast numbers of bodies in the Solar System, especially in the asteroid belts between Mars and Jupiter and further out in the Kuiper Belt will help us learn more about our local Solar neighbourhood. Rapid scans of the night sky will add another layer to our NEO (Near Earth Asteroid) detection programs to help us identify any objects that could pose a threat to us. The ability to map faint galaxies across large areas of the sky in great detail will also assist in studies of the large-scale structure of the Universe, help us learn more about its formation and the mysteries behind dark energy and dark matter. Probably what's has astronomers excited the most is discovering the things they didn't expect. Every time a major new research facility is opened, we tend to get surprised by something out of left field. First light is expected at the Simonyi Survey Telescope at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory sometime in 2024 with major research starting soon after. This observatory and other mega telescope projects coming on-line in the follow decades mean Astronomy in the second half of the 21st Century is going to be amazing! Cheers, Earl White BINTEL 9th June 2023  

NEAF is back for 2023! The world's largest telescope and astro equipment expo back for the first in-person event since the pandemic. BINTEL is attending NEAF (Northeast Astronomy Forum and Space Expo) in the USA and will be reporting from the exhibition.  Check in here from Sunday 16th April for all the latest news and cool gizmos.   Celestron StarSense Autoguider Handles polar alignment and then guides your mount! Celestron SkyMaster Pro Binoculars These new ED binoculars allow you to use standard 1.25 inch filters for Lunar viewing. Tele Vue stand ZWO   John from BINTEL with Memory Li from ZWO going through the new ZWO mounts, refractors and Seestar S50 smart telescope.

More magic from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) The planet Uranus and its rings. First observed via telescope in 1781 by astronomer William Herschel, Uranus is the seventh planet in the Solar System was the first one we learned about in modern times. The others - Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn - had all been familiar to ancient peoples across the world. Uranus is visible in telescopes as a small, greenish-blue hue and under ideal conditions, might be able to be spotted under a dark sky if you have great eyesight. Like all the gas giants in the Solar System, Uranus has a ring system surrounding the planet. The rings around Uranus were discovered by accident in 1977 by astronomers who were looking into the planet's atmosphere. They've been imaged from Earth once before using the Keck telescope and from space as Voyager 2 flew past the planet, but never in such detail as this recent JWST image. Apart from the amazing image of the rings themselves, JWST has also captured the polar cap which unlike anywhere in the Solar System is on the side of the planet - not at the poles. This is because Uranus orbits the Sun tilted on its side, resulting in the longest and most extreme seasons of anywhere in the Solar System. It's thought that Uranus is tilted this way due to an impact with a rocky body about one to three time the size of the Earth sometime in the early formation of Solar System. While JWST is delivering groundbreaking data which will help us better understand and, in some cases, rethink the nature of the large scale structure of the Universe, our largest space-based telescope will also help us learn about our Solar System. Supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A) When stars over certain size reach the end of their lives, they explode in a massive event called a Supernova. The evolution of a star leading up to this event are fascinating and the leftover remnants are some of the more spectacular objects in the sky. Our own Sun will explode as Supernova in about 10 billion years, after becoming a Red Giant in some 5 billion years. (Note to self - add both dates to the BINTEL Astro Calendar....) The striking colours in this JWST image of Cas A are infrared light which has been translated to the visual colours we can see with our eyes.  Cas A has been studied with ground-based telescopes as well as Hubble and is the closest Supernova remnant to the Earth resulting from the explosion of a massive star. Why Supernova remnants are important.  One of the reasons we observe Supernova remnants is to learn about cosmic "dust". This is made up of heavier elements than hydrogen and helium and tiny particles of it are distributed into interstellar space during a supernova. It then clumps together over vast periods of time under the influence of gravity, where it forms planets and even us! Yes - the hard matter around you was once part of a supernova explosion.  One problem we hope to solve is that we can't reconcile the amount of dust we see in early galaxies. Careful studies of objects like Cas A might help us understand how the world around us came into existence. New Star Formation and Galactic Evolution In the weeks leading up to January 2004, the Hubble Space Telescope carefully photographed a small spot in the sky, capturing faint photons for a total of over 11 days taken over 400 orbits. The image produced by combining some 800 exposures is called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. It shows a vast collection of galaxies of all types, with some of the smaller, red coloured galaxies already formed when the Universe was only about 800 million years old.  Like the earlier Hubble Deep Field image produced in the middle 1990's, the field of view is so narrow, there's almost no stars from our own Milky Way in the foreground. It's basically entirely composed of galaxies. What came from these and subsequent deep-field images - including one taken of the southern skies - was a better appreciation of the early structure of the Universe, that it looks similar in all directions, and that we live a typical place. Now the JWST has imaged the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UDF) in less than a day instead of the 11 days it took Hubble. By using the JWST NIRCam’s medium-band image filters, it was able to capture more information for better spectroscopic analysis across almost the entire field.  The original Hubble deep field images have been intensely studied over the years and these new JWST images will help add to our knowledge. Plus the fact they were captured in only a fraction of time points to even more amazing views in the coming years. Cheers, Earl White BINTEL 14th APril 2023

Will an asteroid really hit the Earth on Valentine's Day in 2046? Probably not! There's been a lot of press coverage recently about the likelihood of an asteroid impact, like this article from CNN. The short is answer is probably not - but let's look at how we classify dangerous space rocks. What's the Torino Scale?  Following on from some of the articles we're run recently about meteorites, we've been asked some questions about are there any space rocks currently on a collision course with Earth. Until a couple of months ago, there were none. Then a pesky one popped up and we thought it would be a good time to cover how we track asteroids and comets that pose a danger to us. First up - there's nothing immediate to worry about! The Torino scale is a way to measure the threat level that a particular space object poses to the Earth and the various human and non-human critters that live here. It was adopted in 1999. It's rated from 0 to 10. All comets and all asteroids bar one that are whizzing around the Solar System are rated as a 0. This means that there's no chance of them impacting the Earth in a way that would cause damage of any concern. An objected rated as a 10 is a large object that will definitely hit Earth and cause immense damage on a planet wide scale.  This is the sort of impact that caused the extinction of the non-flying dinosaurs. Just how dangerous an object is between 0 and 10 depends on two main factors. One is the chance of hitting the Earth. This is calculated by observing the object over a period of time and then refining its predicted orbit.  Objects initially found on path to hit the Earth that was calculated shortly after their discovery might end up missing us once further observations are made. The other factor that makes up an object's Torino score is the likely energy released by the potential impact. This is stated in Megatons (millions of tonnes of TNT) - the same unit used to describe the power of humanity's most powerful weapon, the Hydrogen or H-Bomb.  Recent impacts such as the Asteroid 2023 CX1 that we wrote about here and which hit on the 13th of February 2023 had an energy of some 300-400 kilotons (.3 to 4. of a Megaton).  The meteor that exploded over Tunguska in Russia in 1908 released about 20-30 Megatons. The event that wiped out the non-flying dinosaurs approx. 65 million years released some 100 million Megatons of energy. 2023 DW - Torino Score of 1 As I'm writing this - 12th March 2023 - there is one object that has a "1" rating on the Torino scale. This means there's a small chance it will hit the Earth and if it does - and there's only a tiny chance it will - the impact event will be significant.  Objects are placed as a level 1 on the Torino Scale a few times a year and always bumped back down to 0 once we learn more about them. Asteroid 2032 DW - if it were to hit the Earth - would impact us on the 14th of February 2046. (NASA supplied illustration of an asteroid.) Based on current orbital data, the chance of 2023 DW hitting Earth on Valentine's Day 2046 is around 600 to 1. This is small chance of happening, but if were to occur, the asteroid would impact us with a similar amount of energy that was released by the Tunguska event in 1908. This asteroid (or possibly small comet fragment) hit a remote area of Siberia where it flattened over 2,000 square kilometres of forest. If it had struck the Earth a few hours later, it might have destroyed Paris or London. Why aren't we more concerned about 2023 DW? First of all, the chance of impact is remote. But more importantly, astro objects that end up at 1 or more on the Torino scale are more likely to be moved back to 0 once more data and observations have been gathered about their movement through the Solar System. This happens several times a year when we discover space rocks that might be headed our way, only to reclassify them as a totally safe, "0" once more data about their predicted orbits are worked out. 2023 DW is very likely to be back to a "0" on the Torino scale by the time you read this. Have we ever spotted anything that posed a really serious threat? There's a been a few, but one stands out in particular.  The asteroid 99942 Apophis spent several days as a "4" on the Torino scale in December 2004. Calculations at the time gave Apophis a nearly 3% chance of hitting the Earth in 2029. As this asteroid is some 370m in size, the damage such an impact could cause would be massive and widespread. Observations of Apophis in the following weeks ruled out an impact in 2029 and based on subsequent data, it's now calculated not be a danger to the Earth for at least another 100 years. The approx. size of asteroid 99942 Apophis compared to the Empire State Building and the Eiffel Tower While 99942 Apophis won't hit the Earth in 2029, it will come close enough to be a seen with just your eyes at around magnitude 3.1. We'll no doubt be mentioning more about in future BINTEL posts closer to the approach.  :) Cheers, Earl White BINTEL 13th March 2023