Occultation of iota Cancri by (411) Xanthe April 18 UT by Howard Cohen - New 2007 April 18, 22h UT

From: Howard L Cohen [hrzams@yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2007 12:36 AM
To: hrzams@yahoo.com
Subject: Iota Occultation Results

Successfully recorded simultaneous video and WWV audio of the Iota 
Occultation on VHS tape. 

My wife Marian and Larry Friedberg aided me and were a big help.

From just replaying the tape after the event it seems Iota Can A  
went out at approx. 8:55:58 pm EDT or about 16 sec earlier than 
expected. The video clearly shows the event -- very exciting!  
Duration was about 8 sec. as expected for a location near center 
line.  The star seemed to fade out slowly rather than quickly 
winking out with reappearance faster.  Clouds were everywhere but 
skies cleared with some lingering haze near sunset.  WWV weakened 
near sunset -- not uncommon and was very poor till just before the 
event, then came back strong enough to be clearing heard on 
playback. 

Obviously more careful analysis of the tape will be needed and I 
will need to send the recording away for digital insertion of the 
recorded audio WWV signals onto the video for more accurate timings. 

 I gathered both successfully observed the event.  After returning 
home about midnight I had e-mail from some people.  You should have 
gotten a preliminary e-mail from Bill and both Bob O'Connell and 
Chuck Broward about their success.  Bill's results seem fairly 
consistent with my own observations.  I believer Mike Toomey was 
also successful.  Don Loftus left a message on my home machine that 
he saw an approximate 2 sec event, consistent with his position near 
the southern limit.  Scott McCartey sent a brief message saying he 
did not see any event.  He should have been just inside the southern 
predicted limit.  So either there is slight path error or the 
asteroid size/shape did not allow him to see the event.  However, it 
does seem the path may have been fairly close to the predicted path 
from what people have reported so far. 

If you have not sent me a preliminary report about your success or 
failure, do so with with a cc to everyone else. 

It seems so far we have pretty good luck and hopefully some useful 
information about the size and shape of Xanthe will result. 

More later.

Thanks to everyone for your cooperation and successes.

Howard