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Old 27-07-2013, 08:09 AM
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StephenM (Stephen)
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Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Brisbane
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Asteroid 576 Emanuela occulting a mag 6.4 star

Hi all,

I captured my first asteroid occultation last night. As previewed in the July issue of AS&T (p.58), Emanuela passed in front of the star HIP 94645 at about 6:54:30 pm. I drove to a spot just a few km south of the Amberley air force base, and set up my Canon 50D and 70-200mm telephoto lens, capturing a series of 1 sec exposures at f/4 and 3200 iso. Based on these images, the occultation lasted for about 7.5 seconds.

Here's a short star trail image consisting of about 1 minute of 1 sec exposures stacked using star trails. You can clearly see the gap in the trail of HIP 94645, where the star disappeared behind the asteroid.

There's also a 4 mg animation of the occultation here:

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2880/9...70728149_o.gif

Hopefully a few other people measured the occultation as well, so that we can get an measurement of the asteroid's size and shape!

Cheers,
Stephen
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