It is outstandingly rare to have an oportunity to see a naked eye asteroidal occultation. Someone between Brisbane and Gympie may get lucky and spot the asteroid (3995) Sakaino blot out Theta Ceti (mag 3.6) for upto 1.4 seconds. Short but very sweet.
The event will happen on Saturday the 10th of Oct at about 7:55 pm. Theta Ceti will be 30 degrees high almost due East.
Please put it in your 'to do' list, it would be a really significant observation as this asteroid has never been measured before.
It is outstandingly rare to have an oportunity to see a naked eye asteroidal occultation. Someone between Brisbane and Gympie may get lucky and spot the asteroid (3995) Sakaino blot out Theta Ceti (mag 3.6) for upto 1.4 seconds. Short but very sweet.
The event will happen on Saturday the 10th of Oct at about 7:55 pm. Theta Ceti will be 30 degrees high almost due East.
Please put it in your 'to do' list, it would be a really significant observation as this asteroid has never been measured before.
Will this make for a good target to video record, I might give it a go if it is.
Also I might be just outside the target zone as I am in Shailer Park near the Hyperdome, still would it be worth having ago or are the calculations for the target zone accurate?
And if so will say .25 second intergrations be ok or would you need faster ones?
Matt, Asteroidal Occultations are a bit of a lottery. In this case that star position is very well established, but not the asteroid so it is absolutely worth recording - you will go down in history if you capture it!
If you are using your malincam, you can do this one live with no issues. Have a go before hand (once this dust clears)!
Yep, bloody dust.
I will give it a try and pray for a lottery win.
Everyone with a means to capture something like this let me say the excitement if you pull it off is amazing, I have been part of a S/nova discovery and the rush that goes on when you pull it off is very rewarding, so I will be giving this one ago weather dependent.
Hey Matt,
Are you planning on using a scope for this, or naked eye ???
What size scope ?
I live at Tanah Merah, 2 minutes from you with an eight inch. I assume you get as much light pollution as me?
Visiting the website given by Astrojunk, it seems the Moon will be at 78 degrees and at 61%, so there may be a complete washout to see Theta Ceti naked eye. Will have to use a scope.
Visiting the website given by Astrojunk, it seems the Moon will be at 78 degrees and at 61%, so there may be a complete washout to see Theta Ceti naked eye.
Hi Rob, I wouldn't worry - that page is a little misleading. It is true that the moon is separated by 78 degrees from the star, but what it fails to mention is that it won't be above the horizon for another 4 hours
Clouds/dust/streetlights are going to be the main concern...
Hey Matt,
Are you planning on using a scope for this, or naked eye ???
What size scope ?
I live at Tanah Merah, 2 minutes from you with an eight inch. I assume you get as much light pollution as me?
Visiting the website given by Astrojunk, it seems the Moon will be at 78 degrees and at 61%, so there may be a complete washout to see Theta Ceti naked eye. Will have to use a scope.
Just a heads up.
I will be using a scope for this Rob unless its raining.
Its a 12 inch LX200R with a Mallincam astro video system attached so I won't have too much trouble seeing Theta Ceti. My combo can go down to about Mag 20 in 56 seconds on a good night here in the burbs but I won't be using long intergrations just short ones probally 0.15 seconds so if the star blocks out for the 2 seconds hopefully I can catch it, like Jonathan says, it will be a lottery win to capture but might as well have ago.
This sort of astronomy along with super nova searching which a good friend of mine does is what astronomy is all about and not just pretty pictures. I find it very interesting as its real action taking place out there.
My combo can go down to about Mag 20 in 56 seconds on a good night here in the burbs but I won't be using long intergrations just short ones probally 0.15 seconds so if the star blocks out for the 2 seconds hopefully I can catch it, like Jonathan says, it will be a lottery win to capture but might as well have ago.
Thanks Matt, I didn't think about integration times with this. Ta for the reminder.
Cheers
Thanks Matt, I didn't think about integration times with this. Ta for the reminder.
Cheers
At Mag 3.6 jjj, your g-star will be able to easily pick it up with very short intergrations, say 12X or even with the intergration setting off. Those g-stars are very sensitive.
The short intergrations will act like live viewing so if the star blocks out should be very cool.
I am going to try a few different intergration settings on the star this week to see what shows its nice and clear, if this dust ever goes.
I am going to record to a hard disk video recorder as I find this records the best live image then frames can be accessed from there. I am going to start recording 10mins before.
I've never down this before so should be fun, and if its blocks out what a prize.
I've listed myself as intending to observe this one, as my GPS timing software is coming together well enough that I think it will be running in time. Even though I am just outside the 1-sigma line, it is still worth having a go since the error margin is fairly high.
If all goes well the equipment would be ready for the magnitude 13 event with 554 Peraga just under 2 hours later. Admittedly the second one would be a bit more of a stretch for my equipment
Jonathan, what would be the easiest way to set up for the timing of this event? Can i use my laptop clock if I do a syn with tick.usno.navy.mil just before time and then run an AVI during the process. If the start time is known and the frame rate is known then the rest, as they say should be history.
BTW I'm about center of the very bottom of the 'b' in Nambour in your map.
the Kilcoy contingent look like they are going to get to nail it.
NP. I try to get into the habit of updating everytime I setup for some imaging. I may not need it, but you never know what may appear in an image. I wonder if there is a way to automatically update the 20D clock when I connect it to the laptop via USB. good question to start a new thread with.
Jonathan, what would be the easiest way to set up for the timing of this event? Can i use my laptop clock if I do a syn with tick.usno.navy.mil just before time and then run an AVI during the process. If the start time is known and the frame rate is known then the rest, as they say should be history.
I'm relatively new to this, however I have a few answers for you
If you have any dropped frames they will skew the perceived time, also this would give you second level accuracy at best. I'm currently working on a capture application to timestamp AVI frames as they are recorded using time from GPS and NTP sources, for exactly this purpose. It currently supports primarily the Imaging Source cameras. Basically I am hoping to provide an alternative to the Kiwi-OSD for people using USB/Firewire cameras. In the long term the app will need to be non-free, as I am needing to pay for the API, but I will be providing it for free to any willing beta testers I'm hoping to provide both lite and feature rich versions to keep the cost down for users who just need the basic features. Obviously any work/support/etc related to this will be kept off of IIS, as it is my own personal venture.
If you have a stable NTP server running on your laptop, and have adequate time for the clock to stabilise prior to your capture, NTP can be a viable clock option. The port of NTPD to Windows can be found here. It will provide significantly better clock synchronisation than the bare bones SNTP implementation in Windows, as it actually attempts to discipline the system clock and not just periodically skew it.
However, as NTP requires a significant time to discipline a system clock, especially under Windows, I have additionally added support for directly reading a PPS and NMEA signal from a serial attached GPS receiver. The timing loop driven by this is capable of sub-millisecond accuracy, within tens of seconds of the GPS receiver acquiring a satellite lock, rather than the minutes to hours needed by NTP. GPS receiver hardware needed to support this is a Garmin 18x LVC in a serial configuration, as described and available here, or a similar PPS capable serial GPS receiver with the PPS signal connected to the DCD pin. A unit in this configuration is around $100 AU if ordered from overseas, which isn't too bad considering what it provides.
Cheers Eric. I got the first line and the next paragraph, but the rest went over my head like a circus tent. However I would be interested in beta testing as I have DMK and DBK cameras (usb). Can you tone the rest down for me. What do I need in way of a GPS? I see the Garmin is serial, what about USB connection to a GPS?
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