Eclipse of Iapetus by Saturn and its Rings - New 2007 May 4

The start of the eclipse will be visible from South America and North America except the westernmost areas

New: 2007 May 4 UT, 16h UT

It looks like the first two events will be observable this evening 
from the Americas, although probably in daylight or too bright 
twilight in the westernmost parts of North America.  I think the 
later events might be seen from Asia and maybe Australia, with the 
last one more for eastern Europe and Africa.

David

To: 
From: "Mitsuru SOMA" 
Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 15:21:18 +0900
Subject: [IOTAoccultations] Eclipse of Iapetus

The last Eclipse of Iapetus in this season will soon occur on May 5 
(UT). Here is a figure showing the relative positions of the satellites and 
Saturn's shadow; the figure in a Power Point file is here.

The last event occurred on 2007 Feb 14. The reappearance of the 
satellite from the shadow of Saturn on that day was observed by Dave 
Herald, and his observation indicated that the event occurred a 
little earlier than the predicted time using the satellite orbital 
elements of TASS1.6. I have calculated the predicted event times of 
May 5 using the orbital elements of TASS1.6 (Vienne & Duriez 1995), 
Harper & Taylor (1993), and Dourneau (1993). The predictions are 
given in the following table (this table must be displayed with a 
fixed-space font such as Courrier). 

Eclipse of Iapetus on 2007 May 5 (UT)

Event       TASS1.6    HT  Dourneau S Dur
             h   m   h   m   h   m    m
EcD Saturn  02 16.4 01 54.4 02 03.6 14.8
(EcD A out) 02 25.3 02 01.8 02 37.4 58.9 
EcR Saturn  12 07.7 11 45.9 11 48.9 14.4 
EcD B in    14 30.3 14 09.8 13 54.2 38.1 
EcR B out   17 15.6 16 53.8 16 54.4 16.3 
EcD A in    17 42.2 17 20.3 17 22.1 15.2 
EcR A out   19 01.1 18 38.9 18 43.8 13.1

E.g. "EcD B in" means eclipse disappearance into the inner edge of B ring.
The times are for the center of the satellite and "S Dur" column 
gives the semi-duration of each event due to the sizes of the 
satellite and the Sun. The central event time of "(EcD A out)" is 
after "EcD Saturn", so its central event would not be observed, but 
the semi duration is long so the beginning of the event should be 
observable. 

Please check what events are observable from your site (select the 
nighttime event while Saturn is above horizon). 

Best regards, Mitsuru Soma