Asteroidal & Planetary Occultation Updates, January 25-28, 2006
Veritas Occultation Fri. pm has good statistics & mostly clear in NC
Updated: 2006 January 25
I apologize for not updating the normal style of this page since mid August 2005; I plan to do that sometime during the next few weeks. For now, I'm just describing three North American events during the rest of this week. Events are listed in INVERSE chronological order; go to the bottom of this message for the first event, then go up for later ones, which are mostly better (which is why they are given first). We need your help to map the profiles of the mountains of the polar areas of the Moon, and measure the sizes and shapes of three asteroids this week. Let us know your plans so that we can better plan coverage of these events, so that mobile observers don't duplicate your observation. 1. Occultation of an 11.3-mag. star by 485 Genua Friday evening, Jan. 27, New Jersey to Calgary. 2. Occultation of a 10.0-mag. star by the relatively large asteroid 490 Veritas early Friday evening, Jan. 27, Carolinas to Kansas. We especially need observers for this good event with a wide path with good statistics. There is evidence that Veritas is the largest remnant of a past disruption event so it may have one or more satellites; therefore, an event hundreds of kilometers away from the predicted path is possible so observers far from the path may want to monitor the star. Let me know if you might be interested in joining an expedition from the DC region to the Fayetteville, NC area to try to observe it from a few separate locations. 3. Occultation of an 11.4-mag. star by the small asteroid 1012 Sarema tonight (Wed.), Jan. 25/26, New Jersey to Washington State. For the asteroidal occultations, small path maps, detailed finder charts, and detailed updated path information is on Steve Preston's Web site. Very detailed maps for these events can be found on Charlie Ridgway's interactive Web page that links to the very detailed maps and satellite imagery of maps.google.com with overlays of the occultation paths. To see when the occultation will occur at your (or a nearby) location, the probability for an occultation, and the altitudes of the star and the Sun, and to help plan coverage, see the detailed station lists on Derek Breit's site. Please let Derek know if you plan to observe so that he can indicate this on his station list; his e-mail address is breit_ideas@hotmail.com . Please copy to me for the Veritas occultation on Fri. evening. The Web addresses here are general; specific ones for each event are given below. For saving and printing the maps on Charlie Ridgway's Web site, for both asteroidal occultations and grazes, I've found (as advised by James Thompson) that an effective way to do it is, once you have maneuvered and zoomed in to the map area you want, hit the "prt sc" (print screen) key. That saves your screen into memory that you can then paste into a Word or Power Point file. But first you might want to paste it into a utility like Microsoft Paint where you can crop the image to include only the map area, and then paste that into the Word or Power Point file. __________________________________________________ 1. Occultation of 11.3-mag. UCAC2 31310997 by 64-km 485 Genua Friday evening, Jan. 27. Note that the UT date is Jan. 28 for all observers, but the local date is Jan. 27 across North America. The path crosses central New Jersey, and from Philadelphia to Erie, Penn. at 2:00 UT (9:00 pm EST); at 2:01 UT, over s. Ont. (just n. of London), central lower Mich., and Door Peninsula, Wisconsin; at 2:02 UT (8:02 am CST), over n.w. Wisc., n. Minn. (Duluth in path), and n.e. N. Dakota (Grand Forks); at 2:03 UT (7:03 am MST), over s. Sask. (Regina just n. of path but could have an occultation) and southern Alberta (Calgary just s. of path but could have an event). Accuweather forecasts less than 40% cirrus for New Jersey; I haven't checked other areas. The star is at J2000 R.A. 7h 27m 18.4s, Dec. -01 deg. 26' 05", in Monoceros about 7 deg. s.s.w. of Procyon, 4 deg. s. of delta 1 Canis Minoris, and 0.6 deg. northwest of a 6th-mag. star. Steve Preston's link for this event Charlie Ridgway's interactive maps site for this event Derek Breit does not have a page for this event yet; you might request (to him at breit_ideas@hotmail.com ) that one be added. __________________________________________________ 2. Occultation of 10.0-mag. TYC 0736-00356-1 by the 116-km asteroid 490 Veritas early Friday evening, Jan. 27. Note that the UT date is Jan. 28 for all observers, but the local date is Jan. 27 across North America. The path crosses southern North Carolina (Fayetteville and Charlotte are near the center) and northern South Carolina at 0:49 UT (7:49 pm EST), Tennessee (Nashville at center) and southern Missouri at 0:50 UT (6:50 pm CST), and southern Kansas (Wichita near center) at 0:51 UT. Accuweather is forecasting dry conditions with only about 20% cirrus in s.e. North Carolina; I haven't checked other areas yet. If that good forecast holds, I'll try to observe this event myself, and want to coordinate my plans with others. I hope to leave the DC region by 10 am EST Friday. The star is at J2000 R.A. 6h 23m 55.5s, Dec. +11 deg. 02' 05", in Orion about 8 deg. e.n.e. of Betelgeuse, and near where the Orion - Gemini - Monoceros borders meet. The target star should be fairly easy to find, being 2 deg. s.e. of 5th-mag. 73 and 74 Orionis, about 25' w.s.w. of a distinctive group of 7th-mag. stars, and only 7' n.n.e. of an 8th-mag. star. Steve Preston's link for this event Charlie Ridgway's interactive maps site for this event Derek Breit's station list for this event Two mobile observers and one fixed-site one (John Graves in Nashville) have said they will try this event and are indicated by by color-code in Derek's list at the above Web site. I'll distribute a list of planned sites to better plan for this event in a couple of days, certainly by Thursday evening. __________________________________________________ 3. Occultation of an 11.4-mag. star by the 21-km asteroid 1012 Sarema tonight (Wed.), Jan. 25/26, New Jersey to Washington State. Note that the UT date is Jan. 26 for all observers, but the local date is Jan. 25 across North America. The path crosses central New Jersey at 4:41 UT (11:41 pm EST), then over Pennsylvania to just s. of Erie at 4:43 UT, over Detroit at 4:44 UT, across southern Wisconsin (just north of Milwaukee, which could have an occultation) at 4:46 UT (10:46 pm CST), over southern Minnesota (s. of Minneapolis) at 4:47 UT, northern South Dakota at 4:49, Montana from 4:51 to 4:54 (9:51 to 9:54 MST), and over Washington State, near Yakima and Olympia, around 4:56 UT (8:56 pm PST). Astro Meteo (Clear Sky Clock) forecasts mosty clear in New Jersey, then partly to mostly cloudy across eastern Penn., and overcast in n.w. Penn., mostly cloudy in s. Ont., clear in the Detroit area (?), but mostly cloudy across the rest of Michigan; then clear from Wisconsin to S. Dakota, partly cloudy across Montana, and mostly cloudy over Washington. The star, TYC 1872-00305-1, is at J2000 R.A. 6h 03m 07.4s, Dec. +27 deg. 08' 21", in Gemini near the Taurus border about 3 deg. north and a little west of M35. Steve Preston's link for this event Charlie Ridgway's interactive maps site for this event Derek Breit's station list for this event __________________________________________________ David Dunham, IOTA home dunham@starpower.net 301-474-4722 cell 301-526-5590 office david.dunham@jhuapl.edu 240-228-5609