First results for the Jan. 10/11 Bathilde occultation
Updated: 2003 Jan. 14I videorecorded a miss at 3 km north of Preston's central line, south of Glennville, Georgia, and many other miss observations farther north have also been reported. Steven Meeks says Jacksonville observers set up two stations, at 8 km and 20 km south, near US 17 in Georgia, and they reported misses. But the 20 km s. disagrees with a positive observation by Peter Lazar at 13 km south near Baton Rouge, Louisiana; maybe the observer at 20 south was on the wrong star? Houston was mostly clouded out, but Paul Maley reports that with the large telescope at George Observatory at 60 km s., they saw a 2-second occultation. Peter Lazar was pretty sure of his event, and it did occur at about the right time, but 5 minute later, the star was lost in thicker clouds, so he is not 100% confident in it. But it does agree with a short event at George Obs., and I think also with observations from two stations by Roger Venable (a remote video at 44 km S and a visual binoculars observation at 51 km S; the latter had a longer duration). Unfortunately, it clouded over in most of Italy (as expected), and also in much of southwestern France (not expected). But supporting the Jacksonville observations and casting doubt on Lazar's are miss observations reported by the Spanish observers from Sabadell who travelled to locations near Narbonne, France, even south of 20 km S., and a positive observation by Oscar Canales I believe from his home in Pinsoro, Spain, at 94 km south, indicating that the south shift was well over a path-width (but according to Jean Lechaceux, Oscar was almost coincident with Roger Venable's chord, so he may have moved to near the s. limit for the occultation). In the next few days, I'll check the reports more carefully and post the latest results here when I can. The rather large shift for this bright star was disappointing, but in retro-respect could be expected because it was a rather bright Tycho-2 star, without the benefit of good proper motions determined for HIP stars. The star was too bright to have good positions determined from any of the photographic surveys (AGK, Yale, or the recent UCAC), but too faint to be included in the FK catalogs. Tycho-2 depended on old catalog positions for proper motions, and for SAO 117679, that could mean the notoriously poor Albany General Catalog from around 1900. In the future, I will be less enthusiastic about occultations of Tycho-2 stars brighter than 9th mag. We do much better with HIP stars, and the 9th-mag. and fainter stars, especially for the latter when we have UCAC updates. Our long trip to Georgia was not entirely without results. The next evening, on the way home, we stopped east of Autryville, North Carolina, and from three separate stations we video recorded a grazing occultation of 7.6-mag. ZC 350 well on the dark side of the gibbous Moon, from 7:21 - 7:26 pm EST. Bob Melvin informed me of some history of Autryville, and an unusual incident that occurred the morning of the day we were there, here. David Dunham, IOTA