Asteroid to black out bright naked-eye star late Wednesday night

A faint asteroid, Erigone, will dramatically black out a bright naked-eye star, Regulus, very late next Wednesday night for more than 20 million people in the New York metropolitan area and parts of Long Island, New Jersey, Connecticut, upstate New York, and Ontario.

The star will vanish from sight for up to 14 seconds around 2:06 a.m. EDT on the morning of the 20th for New Yorkers, and a minute or two later farther north.

Alan MacRobert, a senior editor at Sky and Telescope magazine said that Regulus shines right through moonlight and light pollution that's in the sky-even the light pollution over a city like New York.

In fact, this is the first time in history that an occultation of such a bright star by an asteroid has been predicted to cross such a heavily populated area.