Pluto Occults 15th Mag star June 12th 16h25min UTC

[gary]

Observers in Tasmania, Southern mainland Australia and New Zealand,
might be interested in attempting to observe an occultation of the 15th
Mag star designated as UCAC 2603 9859 by Pluto on June 12th 2006, 16h 25min UTC.

As the near full Moon will only be 15 degrees away from Pluto,
this observation will be challenging and you should take precautions
to prevent scattered light entering the OTA.

This occultation is of great interest scientifically. Astronomers hope that
observations of Pluto will help determine more about its atmosphere and
winds. It is also hoped that more can be determined about the recently discovered
satellite of Pluto, designated as P2. This object is believed to be only 100km
in diameter but it is hoped that a better determination of its size can
be made along with determining if Pluto has a ring system.

This is a rare opportunity for suitably equipped amateur astronomers
to make observations that can be of scientific benefit.

Professional astronomers will be making observations, including teams
from the United States and Germany who will be working from the
University of Tasmania.

More information about this event can be found here -
http://www.iota-es.de/pluto384.html

Best Regards

Gary Kopff
Managing Director
Wildcard Innovations Pty. Ltd.
20 Kilmory Place, Mount Kuring-Gai
NSW. 2080. Australia
Phone +61-2-9457-9049
Fax +61-2-9457-9593
sales@wildcard-innovations.com.au
http://www.wildcard-innovations.com.au

[davidpretorius]

thanks gary, a bit out of my league, but if the fog goes away, then who knows??

[gary]

Hi David,

One amateur astronomer who will be attempting to make an
observation is Dave Gault, a member of the Astronomical
Society of New South Wales.

Dave reoported back to me on the ASNSW group that -

"I have been doing a few practise runs to ensure I can
contribute to the observation. The last attempt was
made at 1am Monday morning. The goal was to mimic the
conditions that observers would experence on the 12th
June. ie... Full Moon within 15 degrees of the mag. 15
target star. My image can be seen here...

http://www4.tpgi.com.au/users/daveg/...field_1sec.gif

The details of equipment and exposure are written on the
image, but in short, it's within reach of many amateurs.

I encourage everyone to try to observe this event even
if their position is not near the predicted paths for
Pluto and P2 as... -The prediction could be wrong. -We
could detect other bodies in the Pluto system as well as
other goals detailed on the website (above). -it's fun
and a chance to stretch your skills."

The person who originally alerted me of the occultation was Shevill
Mathers of the AST in Tasmania. Shevill is one of Australia's most dedicated
amateur astronomers and has been assisting a team at the University of
Tasmania, including donating time, energy and his own money into
making sure the Univeristy's 16" Newtonian will be ready for the observation.
The University recently purchased an Argo Navis which will form part of the
system, so we are delighted to play a small part.

We wish all those attempting to make the observation the best of luck.

Best Regards

Gary Kopff
Managing Director
Wildcard Innovations Pty. Ltd.
20 Kilmory Place, Mount Kuring-Gai
NSW. 2080. Australia
Phone +61-2-9457-9049
Fax +61-2-9457-9593
wildcard@wildcard-innovations.com.au
http://www.wildcard-innovations.com.au

[gary]

Hi David

As a further follow-up to my post, Shevill Mathers
of the Astronomical Society of Tasmania writes -

-------------------------------------------------------

Hello Gary

Many thanks for posting this, I have tried to spread the
info as wide as possible and have put it on the AVA.
site as well. Maybe someone from SA will pick it up too.
It certainly has got some of us 'down under' working
hard to get ancient equipment somewhere up to spec for
this type of event. I demosntrated the Argo Navis to the
Uni astronomers, I use one on a homebuilt 12" f/5 (soon
to become a 16" f/4.5) and they were impressed with the
AN, so we are fitting one on the 45 year old 16" We are
hoping to get one or two mobile telescopes to different
locations and I will be doing the video with GPS timing
insertion (or that is the plan).

We will be using the 1-metre, and a 'Palomar Horseshoe'
type mounted 16" at Mt Canopus. When one sees the size
of the mounting the 'tube' is about one third the size
of the mounting of some tons. Ideal camera/equipment
carrying telescope with fantastic tracking. Two of us
(amateurs) from the astronomical society, AST, have
been invited to join in the events, so the past few
weeks has seen a great deal of activity. We have sent
off 5 mirrors for re-aluminising & making mods to fit
an AN to the 16" and maybe a Celestron (18 year old
model) with encoders. We need to use apertures of 10" up
at very fast focal ratio's F/3, 4, 5. to maximise the
light on to minimal pixels. SCT scopes with need a good
focal reducer to get as fast and bright as possible.
That is the message I get from Wolfgang Beisker (IOTA)

I am working on two options, a local one at my
observatory using the Argo Navies equipped 12"
Newtonian, just 1.1 km away from the main observatory,
and a transportable system for remote use. It is a Meade
SN-10 modified with a decent Crayford type Moonlite
focuser with computor / electronic control and a Watec
120N connected to a digital recorder. This is mounted on
an Anssen Technologies Alhena GEM, weighing in at over
45 kg. FS2 German controller with shaft encoders and
motor encoding. The GPS time inserter may be used on
this system. We have not yet determined who will be at
which telescope/location, it is a public holiday and
most people will be away on a 3-day wekend!

We have teams from the US, France & Germany coming to Mt
Canopus. I am lending the German team a heap of my video
equipment, broadcast TV monitors, cameras etc to save
them bringing all that extra equipment.It will be great
to meet these felow astronomers.

On the 26th July, we hope to repeat the whole process
again with the Pluto/Charon occultation, so all this
work & preparation gets two bites of the apple. It will
be a great opportunity, as I would like to write an
article on the events for several magazines. This will
help to promote Tasmania as a unique astronomy tourism
opportunity at 42 degrees south, the last point before
Antarctica.

Details & sky charts:
http://www.iota-es.de/pluto384.html

Hoping for clear skies - on both nights!,

Shevill Mathers
Southern Cross Observatory - Hobart, Tasmania.
www.taao.has.it

[rogerg (Roger)]

Maybe I'm really dumb or maybe I should read the webpages more carefully before asking this, but either way I'll go right ahead...

I'm really interested in this and have the equipment to be able to take images of such an event, I only just noticed the thread about it here today. But, is there anything I can do over/up in Perth? Or is it simply not visible from here? I'm not certain if it is or not from the carts.. there's a red star on perth, but it appears to be outside of the bars showing viewable range..

Thanks,
Roger.

[Hitchhiker]

Hi rogerg, it sounds like a great challenge, if you have the gear to observe it!

If you look at the map you can see the occultation track for satellite P2 passes pretty close to Perth (the solid blue line). You may see an occulation by this recently discovered moon. As detailed in the first post, you may even catch an occulation by an undiscovered moon.

It looks like there are a lot of unknowns in the elements for the new moon plus the possibility of undiscovered rings around Pluto so anything could happen. Even if you record no event at all, that information helps constrain the parameters of the Pluto system eg maximum size of P2, presence and size of ring system etc.

Good luck! I'd be very interested in any results you were able to get.

[gary]

Originally Posted by rogerg

Maybe I'm really dumb or maybe I should read the webpages more carefully before asking this, but either way I'll go right ahead...

I'm really interested in this and have the equipment to be able to take images of such an event, I only just noticed the thread about it here today. But, is there anything I can do over/up in Perth? Or is it simply not visible from here? I'm not certain if it is or not from the carts.. there's a red star on perth, but it appears to be outside of the bars showing viewable range..

Thanks,
Roger.

As Hitchhiker has noted, Perth is within the path of possible P2 observations.
A local guru to contact for advice is Shevill Mathers down in Hobart.
Email shevillm@gmail.com
From my correspondence, Shevill is devoting most of his waking hours
to being prepared for this event.
Between he and Wolfgang Beisker, they would be in the best position to
advise on the probability of a P2 observation from your locale for whatever
equipment you specify. Contact Wolfgang at info@iota-es.de

This is the closest thing you can get to Rocket Science and can actually
help influence the design and planning of current & future long range missions
to Pluto. If that sounds fanciful, then check out this web page devoted to
a previous occultation in June 1988 that helped influence the planning
of the New Horizons spacecraft. See -
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/science/ever...tmosphere.html

Good luck!

Best regards

Gary Kopff
Mt. Kuring-Gai

[gary]

Hi Roger,

One thing you will definitely need is access to a very accurate time source,
such as GPS.

Best Regards

Gary

[rogerg (Roger)]

Thanks Gary & Hitchhiker,

Thanks for the info. I'll contact Shevill once I've had a little more time to work things out for myself. Hopefully I'll have a chance this week to take a few test images of Pluto too, it's been a while (year or so) since I last took images of it.

As for accurate time - My scope is sync'd to the computer which is sync'd to the web via time update services, but I suppose that might not be accurate enough? A GPS capable of plugging in to either/both computer or telescope could be a problem for me to achieve.

Lots of other questions such as optimal exposure time & brightness of pluto, etc, which I suspect is probably best directed to Shevill.

All sounds interesting, hopefully I'll be able to organise myself in time to take part, and that the weather will be co-operative.

Roger.

[astroron (Ron)]

Hi Roger if you have a short wave radio you may be able to get WWV from Hawaii on 5,10 15MH, it gives you the time signals, plus if you have a tape recorder you may be able to combine the two with your imaging.

[rogerg (Roger)]

Ron, I'm afraid I'm more likely to have a GPS than a short wave radio, and I don't have a GPS I have to admit, I'm a little confused at how a GPS can be considerred an accurate time device, with 2+ second delay between land -> sat -> land, surely either:

1) The GPS may be at least 2 seconds out of time

or

2) They use algorithms to compute the delay and allow for that in the reported time. In which case there's surely still room for error there.

Anyway, completely off topic!

[astroron (Ron)]

Roger, you can pick up a short wave radio a lot cheaper than a GPS, Tandy, **** Smith and some of the scouting shops sell them, mine only cost $55:00. Ron

[rogerg (Roger)]

Originally Posted by astroron

Roger, you can pick up a short wave radio a lot cheaper than a GPS, Tandy, **** Smith and some of the scouting shops sell them, mine only cost $55:00. Ron

$55... sounds hard to beat

[Greg Bryant]

If you'd like to keep up-to-date on this interesting occultation, join the RASNZ Occultations group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RASNZoccultations/

There have been some informative posts in recent months about this particular event.

[gary]

Originally Posted by rogerg

Ron, I'm afraid I'm more likely to have a GPS than a short wave radio, and I don't have a GPS I have to admit, I'm a little confused at how a GPS can be considerred an accurate time device, with 2+ second delay between land -> sat -> land, !

Hi Rog,

In fact, it is these finite delay times (even at the speed of light) that are
at the very heart of how GPS can be used to determine your location and
also to provide you with very accurate time.

How GPS can supply very accurate timing is very clever.

If you are really interested, I recommend this tutorial here -
http://www.trimble.com/gps/index.html which will provide
a better explanation than could be made by this short response.

You will need a free Shockwave player plugin to view the graphics if
you don't have one.

In the end, the time available from your GPS receiver does not suffer the
propagation delays experienced from using WWV/WWVH on shortwave.

However, there are various relationships between UTC and GPS time
(some of which is to do with the insertion of leap seconds) that
serious pratictioners need to be aware of (and that are well documented on
the web).

Since some GPS receivers only have serial comms ports that run at
low speeds, delays are often more significant as a result of this style of
comms. More elaborate receivers offer an alternate interface as an
accurate timing source.

By the way, did you know the Europeans are about to launch their own
constellation of satellites that will both compete with and complement the
American-built GPS constellation?

Best Regards

Gary Kopff
Mt. Kuring-Gai

[rogerg (Roger)]

This is not looking good for Perth


Sunday Fine. Min 6 Max 20
Monday Shower or two developing. Min 5 Max 21
Tuesday Morning shower or two. Min 7 Max 18
Wednesday Fine, partly cloudy. Min 5 Max 18
Thursday Fine. Min 4 Max 19

[Blue Skies (Jacquie)]

Well, I know what happened to rogerg (a surprising turn in the weather, btw), but did anyone else in Australia get a good result from this event?

[gary]

Shevill Mathers emailed me the following account from Hobart.

Best Regards

Gary Kopff
Managing Director
Wildcard Innovations Pty. Ltd.
20 Kilmory Place
Mount Kuring-Gai NSW 2080
Australia
Phone +61-2-9457-9049
Fax +61-2-9457-9593
sales@wildcard-innovations.com.au
http://www.wildcard-innovations.com.au

Originally Posted by Shevill Mathers

Hello All

A very successful Pluto occultation event, clear skies leading up to and during the occultation. All three scopes performed well - after all the usual moments of frustration. The Argo Navis worked well on the C14 & Stefan was very pleased with it.

I packed in around 4am. took some moonlit shots of the Canopus site as well as people and scopes, which I think will look very interesting, they show the location, clouds and how bright it was,- hence the level of difficulty with all the preparation.


Just been interviewed live on ABC radio by Sally Dakers, what, where, who and why etc. She had read Martin Georges' Sunday Mercury article and wanted to talk to someone actually involved on-site - Paul Jackson gave her my name, (not a problem Paul) she phoned me earIy evening while at Canopus for a 6.30am interview!!

I was teamed up with Dr Wolfgang Beisker from Munich on the 16", French astronomer, Alain was with our fearless Dr Stefan Dieters.

Munich is on the WORLD news for soccer reasons, so we decided to toast them and us with French bubbly, in honour of the French team member, Alain.

The American team were with Dr John Greenhill on the 1-metre and they certainly got good data. Clouds were a constant threat for us all but OK during the event.

A wonderful group of people to work with. The data extraction will takes weeks - and of course each country is eager to be the first to publish their results in Nature or whatever. To me, it can best be described as 'looking for a needle in a haystack' on the computer screen. At 13th & 14th mag, they are just very faint specks of light.

Great to see Laurie, Phil & Alan giving local support. Laurie took some pics so lots along with Sandra's & mine. Mt Canopus doing astro science - in the news is always a good thing. I have been keeping Doug Chipman, CCC, up to date.

Got to write up some news clips now for various electronic media, then off to bed.

Best Wishes,

Shevill

[gary]

Dave Gault posted the following on the ASNSW Yahoo Group.

Congratulations Dave!

Best regards

Gary Kopff
Mt. Kuring-Gai NSW Australia

Originally Posted by Dave Gault on ASNSW Group

Hi Everyone,

I observed a positive event on the 12th June 2006,
where Pluto occulted 15th mag. 2UCAC 26039859.

I have done some photometry to the best of my ability
using AIP4WIN and I have uploaded some screen shots.
The images are a bit noisy, which is not surprising
really as it was at the limit of my equipment.

Note: the graph is drawn what I'd call upside down, so
flip it over in your mind.

http://www4.tpgi.com.au/users/daveg/Pluto1621to1627.jpg

Details
25cm Newtonian on GEM (homemade)
Meade Deep Sky Imager Pro
1 second exposures but the rate was one every 1.4
seconds by the time it got to the PC

33°39'52"S
150°38'28"E
286M Alt

Time - My PC showed the same time as the KIWI OSD
which I had running to be sure.

I'm unsure what the story is with the central peak and
the D and R are not instant. To that end, I'm
forwarding my FITS files to Lowell Observatory, maybe
they can use them better than I.

There were others in the field all over Australia and
New Zealand but I'm not sure of the results.

Regards

DaveGault

[rogerg (Roger)]

As Blue Skies hinted at, I have images of the event, about 850 over a couple of hours, who knows if they are useful for anything

I wouldn't know how to know, let alone what to do with them! All a learning experience.

It was fun to do something different, something with a bit of a goal to it.

I have a attached an unprocessed pic, edited to show where Pluto is. It's from well before the 2 met, probably an hour or so before.

I was hoping to get an animated GIF together, but no luck with that yet.

Roger.