This week is a challenge. You will need a pair of binoculars but the prize is to see the asteroid Vesta as it makes its closest pass of the year to Earth.
The chart shows the view looking south from London at 0200 BST on 23 August. Vesta will be 192.26m kms away. In theory, it will just be visible to the naked eye but it will be incredibly difficult to see unless you are viewing under perfect conditions in a dark sky without any light pollution. Preferably, you would also be located farther south than London, so that Vesta appears higher in the sky.
Vesta is the second largest asteroid, after Ceres, and was the fourth to be discovered. It was spotted by the German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers on 29 March 1807 from his home observatory. Together with three other astronomers, playfully called "the celestial police", his aim was to track down a missing planet believed to exist between Mars and Jupiter. They did not find a planet but they discovered a population of small bodies, which became known as the asteroids. Vesta itself is a potato shaped lump of rock and metal, just 525 km across.