Hello,

I just got my tasco 60mmx800mm telescope out last night for the first time and was viewing the planets Mars,Saturn and Jupiter with a Konig 12mm wide field of view eyepiece.

I started viewing Jupiter after it got high enough to see and was awestruck with the view of it and it's moons but to top it off while viewing it at around 3:10 AM ET a object entered from the left and crossed the field of view in about 1-2 seconds, it looked like the size of and brightness of one of Jupiters moons.

Could this have been a Asteroid?

Thanks,

     Pymi

Anything moving that fast has to be very close to the Earth.  What you observed was most likely an artificial satellite.  Seeing satellites through a telescope is rather common.

http://www.heavens-above.com

http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/hattonjasonp/hasohp/TECH.HTML

Telescopic meteors can also be glimpsed occasionally but they cross the field of view extremely quickly.

http://www.imo.net/tele/intro?PHPSESSID=64c62c1ff4d39ca233966233a5aa449a

Dave Mitsky

It must of been a satellite now I think about the speed of it (asteroid slow).

I looked at the area of the sky and did not see anything moving, just pretty wild when not expecting it.

Right, although the rare NEO asteroid can be seen to change position within a fairly short period of time.  I've observed a few of them, asteroid 2002 NY40 (the fastest naturally occurring celestial object, other than a meteor, that I've ever observed) for example, that have moved out of a high power field of view in a matter of minutes.

Dave Mitsky