(893) Leopoldina to Occult a mag.10.6 star

[DaveGee]

Dave Herald wrote on RASNZoccs@Yahoo...
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Just a heads up - there is a good asteroidal occultation by Leopoldina on Monday evening (actually, at around 12.30am on Tuesday morning). The path crosses east of Melbourne, over Canberra, to the west of Sydney, and to the East of Brisbane. The circumstances are good - a 7.6 second duration , star of mag 10.7, and a mag drop of almost 3. Star is 54 deg high in the north-east. A catalogue comparison has all the scatter along-track - so the prospects of a reliable prediction are fairly good. To top it off, currently the cloud prediction is looking good along the path.

Currently there are 8 stations announced for this event in OccultWatcher. It would be good to have even more...!

Dave Herald
Canberra, Australia
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below you can see the announced stations on Occult Watcher as at Friday morning. help:welcome:

[astroron]

Dave I may be just of the line , but what is the co-ordinates and designation of the star?

[DaveGee]

Hi Ron,

See all the details here...
http://occsec.wellington.net.nz/planet/2010/updates/100830_893_21208_u.htm

[astroron]

:thanx:Dave, Nice Bright Moon close by but I will see what I can observe weather permitting:thumbsup:

[astroron]

I have downloaded the Orbital Elements into my Laptop and my Desktop Computers, version 5 of "The sky" on my desktop gives a miss by just under 8 arc minutes.
The Sky version 6 on my lap top gives a direct hit, so I will just have to observe the event to see which one is correct:P
All that has to happen is that we get good weather:prey:

[Outbackmanyep]

Hi Ron,
Even if your predictions are hit or miss....it's still worth giving it a go.
In this business a miss is just as vital as a hit!

You won't have any trouble seeing a mag 13 event under near full moon conditions with your scope!

[astroron]

My sentiments exactly:):thumbsup:

[mithrandir]

Pavlov's Occult Watcher (http://hristopavlov.net/OccultWatcher/OccultWatcher.html) is the software davegee was talking about.

Dave Herald's Occult is here (http://www.lunar-occultations.com/iota/occult4.htm).

Occult Watcher can call c2a (http://www.astrosurf.com/c2a/english/index.htm) to generate charts. I have 10.5Gb of catalogs for c2a (GSC, Tycho-2, ucac2 and ucac3) since that seems to cover the stars I have some chance of seeing.

Ron, it looks like you are a bit too far west. Byron Bay looks like the closest place on the predicted centreline. Oberon is on the centreline if Al is interested.

[Blue Skies]

I was reminded recently that being under the centreline or the predicted shadowline is not always the most important thing, as being on the outside can help determine the limits, plus sometimes the paths shift, or there might be a suspected moon.

Jacquie - who's just spent an hour looking at her own OW predictions list that has a map of the path of Leopoldina crossing the middle of WA with puzzled frown on her face only to realise that there are two Leopoldina occultations within a day of each other... :rolleyes:

[astroron]

I didn't set up the scope as it was light cloud all night, then around midnight it was completely misted over so even the Moon was not visible:(
Did anyone else see anything:question:

[DaveGee]

Hi Ron,

A couple of positives and one negative was observed in the Yass-Canberra region. As soon as I hear more news, I'll post it here.:thumbsup:

[Outbackmanyep]

I was clouded out unfortunately, from reports coming through, me and Dave G should have had positive results should our skies have been clear! Grrrrrrrr

[DaveGee]

Here is the summary of this event...
http://occsec.wellington.net.nz/planet/2010/results/20100830_893_Leopoldina_Rep.htm