A clear moonless night on 1999 April 18th enabled me to image a few galaxies in the Virgo Cluster. Starting my observations at 6 Com I first viewed M99 and M98 and then swept to the east and came across a fine pair of galaxies just a few arc minutes apart. These were NGC 4298 a mottled spiral galaxy and its companion NGC 4302 which is a slender edge on galaxy with a dark dust lane. They both formed such a striking pair and as I hadn't imaged them before I took a few deep exposures. After processing I compared the image with that on the Realsky CD-ROM (the digitised Palomar Sky Survey) and was intrigued to find what looked like a "new star" had appeared on my image. Was this a supernova? Alas no, Guy Hurst editor of the Astronomer identified the culprit as asteroid 8159 which happened to be gliding through the field of view as the image was taken.
