this weeks column for the local papers

Autumn has arrived again, and the nights are getting longer. Anyone wandering out and about at night can take the opportunity to stare up at the Autumn skies and see the Milky Way, and the constellations of Carina, Puppis and Vela, blaze across our night sky. Orion the Hunter and his dog Canis Major are also magnificent. Nights are often cool now, so don't forget your warm jumper before doing any extended star watching.

Venus is still a spectacular crescent low in the western skies at sunset for the first week of the month – by the 13th you won’t be able to see it anymore of an evening.

Comet Lulin looks great in binoculars still even though it is fading.

Looking at the eastern horizon and if you can find the upside down question mark which is Leo and move your binoculars to the left you will find the comet. The circles show the field of view of 10x50 binoculars. Comet Lulin will pass the Beehive cluster of the 6th and 7th of March, then the waxing Moon will make the comet difficult to see.

Mercury , Mars and Jupiter are quite easy to find in the morning sky this month – you probably need to get up about 5,30am to see then well in the east but if you are up it is certainly worth the effort to go outside and see them.

On Friday evening, Rob McNaught working on the Near Earth Object Siding Spring survey found a small (less than 30mtres in diameter) surprise, which has been given the designation 2009 DD45. It was only a 19th-magnitude blip in images taken by Rob. At that time it was already within 1½ million miles of Earth and closing fast. Why am I mentioning this? Well, because this small asteroid will pass close to Earth tomorrow morning 00:44 AEDST. So how close will it get? It is calculated that it will be that it'll be 0.00047 of an astronomical unit from the centre of the earth or in more normal terms about 63,500 km up. This distance will put it well within the orbit of the Moon but at least twice as high as the altitude of most communications satellites!

This is no threat to the Earth but just interesting as it was discovered locally only a few days ago. Just for interest, this isn't the closest "near-miss" asteroidal fragment on record. That belongs to tiny 2004 FU162 which skirted just 5,500 kilometres from us on March 31, 2004.