Occult Software -- missing predicted asteroid events!

[lepton3]

Hi All,

I have recently been generating predictions for occultations by asteroids using the Occult 4.0.8.16 software, and have noticed some oddities.

It seems every time I update the asteroid elements files and re-run predictions, some occultation events disappear and new ones appear.

One example in particular: when I ran on 14 June, I go a prediction that 1107 Lictoria occults TYC 6295-01408-1u on Jul 05 with 49% probability, and the path goes right over Adelaide.

Today I updated the asteroid elements files (Astorb and MPCORB), re-ran predictions, and this event is no longer there!

Is there something wrong with my setup?

Or is this just refinements in the asteroid orbit causing the prediction to no longer occur?

-Ivan

[DaveGee]

Hi Ivan,

It's hard to know what is going on with your searches, but rest assured that the Lictoria event is still valid.

Steve Preston publishes asteroid occultation predictions and Steve uses techniques to refine the orbit of the asteroid and the position of the star to achive more accurate predictions than that available from standard references. Steve has this prediction available...
http://www.asteroidoccultation.com/2010_07/0705_1107_21032.htm

There are many methods to access Steve's predictions;
1)- Visit his site... http://www.asteroidoccultation.com/ and go through it looking for events one-by-one.
2)- Viisit his site and download the future.dat file and open that using the Occult asteroid prediction form.
3)- Install Hristo Pavlov's "Occult Watcher" program. See...
http://hristopavlov.net/OccultWatcher/OccultWatcher.html
After installing the program and telling it your coordinates, it will automatically download asteroid events suitable for your site. You can also subscribe to extra feeds (predicted by Me) that are suitable for your site. Occult watcher allows you to "announce" your intentions to observe a particular event and you will be able to see who else intends to observe. There is a host of other tricks that Occult watcher can do to help the asteroid occultation observer and the list is too long to mention here, suffice to say that Hristo is an observer and Occult Watcher is taylored to make life easy.

So I'm sorry I can't answer your question directly but I hope I've given you alternatives, and I certainly hope you become a keen observer.

I'm always happy to help...