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Old 22-08-2010, 11:19 PM
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higginsdj
A Lazy Astronomer

higginsdj is offline
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Canberra
Posts: 614
A new binary asteroid and interesting lightcurve

Looks like my latest target, 2121 Sevastopol, is a binary asteroid. Analysis has revealed something most of us haven't seen before in a lightcurve - 3 eclipsing events.

We believe that we are seeing the moon transit, moon shadow transit and eclipse of the moon. We are fortunate to have the target geometry in just the right position (high phase angle and near edge on view of the orbital plane).

We should have enough data in the next lunation to publish a CBET. You can view the lightcurves on my lightcurve results page:
http://www.david-higgins.com/Astrono...ightcurves.htm
http://www.asu.cas.cz/~asteroid/02121_porb.png is the official version of the orbit curve.

Cheers
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