Two weeks before the New Horizons spacecraft enters the Pluto system, there is an occultation of the planet (dwarf planet, plutino, as you wish) which is generating a *lot* of interest.
The occultation is probably visible from much of Australia, although at 31 AU distance, the precise path of the occultation is not perfectly known.
Very exciting all this Pluto-mania! Can't wait for decent images to come through! Forgive the "newbie" question, but, what would you need to see the occultation of the R 12 star by Pluto, apart from supremely good conditions...?
To view the mag 12 Pluto occ of the 29th June, you'd need something like an 8" telescope, preferably with a camera like a G-Star EX or a Watec 120N low light video camera.
To make the visual interest into a scientific recording that will help professional astronomers learn more about Pluto and its environs, you'd also want a video time inserter and some means to record video, e.g. a framegrabber or a video recorder.
Have a look at Blueskies (Jacquie)'s excellent document on occultations How To at the following link:-
Thanks heaps Tony! I certainly have the 8" scope, but seeing as it is a Dob, may be a little difficult! My mate's C 11 may serve better! Will certainly check out the link, thanks again!
The C11 will definitely show up the star. Mag 12 is quite doable in a C11. And the C11 should be able to slew to Pluto quite easily. If you have a video camera you can record for posterity. And be one of the select few who have seen a Pluto occultation. The last one was in 2012, and unlike this one had a 0.3 magnitude drop due to the faintness of the star. It was not discernable except with frame analysis. This one will be quite certain - blink it's gone, and if you are on the central line, gone for around a minute and a half (99 seconds).
This event is to be very special and every effort should be taken to ensure observations are recorded and reported.
For this of you who are not sure what an occultation of a mag. 12 star by Pluto might look like, here is a video of a similar event I recorded in 2008... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WruS6own5qc
The RASNZ occultation predictions have it mostly over the Southern Ocean and missing Australia but reasonably favourable for New Zealand. http://occultations.org.nz/planet/20...29_134340g.gif
The original publication for the prediction you link that has wide coverage of Australia dates from 2010. What's the present situation?
Peter Thomas
Oakleigh, Vic
Quote:
Originally Posted by tonybarry
Two weeks before the New Horizons spacecraft enters the Pluto system, there is an occultation of the planet (dwarf planet, plutino, as you wish) which is generating a *lot* of interest.
The occultation is probably visible from much of Australia, although at 31 AU distance, the precise path of the occultation is not perfectly known.
Predictions of Pluto events depend on the ephemeris and star catalogue used. The Gofin prediction you refer to doesn't specify the ephemeris used.
The prediction below was used using DE432 and UCAC4 and the path covers almost all of Australia and misses New Zealand.
Felipe Braga-Ribas of The RIO group use the older DE430 ephemeris and "special sauce" to apply offsets for Pluto. They also spend a large amount of observing time to obtain good position data for the star. The RIO Group has an excellent record for producing quality predictions and we hope that they publish updates as the date of the event approaches. We will also publish the updates here.
You can also expend lots of energy worrying where the path might lie, or you can observe regardless of any prediction. Observe first, worry second would be my tip.
Dave has answered the question rather better than I could.
One of the challenges of Pluto occultations is that predictions are working at their limits to narrow the path down beyond a hemisphere of earth ... i.e. if you are in the southern hemisphere, then it's likely that you will (may) see the occ.
The MIT crew prediction for this event is for Tassie, NZ, and Antarctica.
The RIO prediction is for Darwin to Port Pirie.
The UCAC4-DE432 prediction is for southern Australia and NZ.
They cannot all be right. But simply by observing we can pin things down a lot more than by not observing. This is where amateur telescopes are of such utility - a mag 12 occ is eminently doable by most 8" scopes, an integrating video camera and a video time inserter. Scatter those telescopes over Australia and NZ, and you can add to the storehouse of scientific knowledge .
A couple of more weeks should yield clearer and more detailed images. Currently it looks like dark(oceans) and light (possibly ice covered rock.the oceans will probably turn out to be plains, not unlike the moon. A very interesting month coming up,clear skies.
The timeline for New Horizons looks very interesting...I had no idea it was launched in January 2006! Clearly NASA is not using Windows...spacecraft's systems are fully operational after 9.5 years of space travel...
