Agata Rożek describes current plans for Earth-based lightcurve observations of #Didymos this year; to give a midpoint between the #DARTMission and the #HeraMission.
If anyone on the South Island has >20 cm telescopes that could be driven to a particular stretch of road south of Dunedin; the asteroids #Didymos and #Dimorphos will apparently run in front of a star as seen from there on 2024 May 5 - https://lagrange.oca.eu/fr/blog .
Not much notice; but maybe someone is already planning something?
The NASA DART spacecraft that rammed into asteroid Didymos's moonlet Dimorphos on Sep 26, 2022, not only created a long tail of fine particles, it also ejected dozens of large boulders from its surface.
The Hubble space telescope imaged 37 such boulders in Dec 2022, ranging in size from 1 m to 6.7 m, which are drifting away from Dimorphos at ~1 km per hour. The total mass in these boulders is about 0.1% that of Dimorphos.
Shown in the first graphic below is the location of asteroid Didymos and its moonlet Dimorphos on Dec 19, 2022, when the Hubble observations were made.
The 2nd graphic shows its location and distance from earth today, which is certainly not favorable for imaging. The next favorable observation period is in July 2024.