Steve Messner has created a page for this occultation at
http://occultationpages.com/events/20200106_1400_Tirela.html including links to ;
Steve Prestonâs charts, and path and NWS cloud-cover forecast maps (areas
along the path are expected to be mostly clear). Besides the Phoenix and n.
L.A. areas, the path crosses the USA, just n. of Truth or Consequences, NM and
just s. of Dallas, TX, but getting rather low east of there; also visible from
northern Honshu, Japan. The prediction has been updated with the help of Gaia
observations of Tirela analyzed at JPL.
_ _ _
We plan to set up as many stations as we can, in a deployment rather similar to
what was done for Leucus, but with much smaller telescopes for the much
brighter star, on the north side of Phoenix, and up north of New River. The
occultation will occur at 3:19am MST (10:19 UT) Monday morning, Jan. 6, and a
minute later over the L.A. region. Please let me know if you might be able to
help our effort for this rare bright event, or to observe it with either our or
your own equipment, from home or from a mobile site. The path is also predicted
to cross the San Gabriel mountains north of Los Angeles, but the path is
uncertain enough that an occultation is possible over Pasadena, the San
Fernando Valley, Simi Valley, and possibly areas a little farther south. In
central Arizona, observers as far south as Gilbert and Tempe are urged to also
try to observe, at least with binoculars from your home. And observers in a
wider area, about 500 km wide centered on the path, might observe an
occultation by a satellite of Tirela, but any such events are likely to be very
short, since even a central occultation by the main body is expected to last
only 1.3 second.
Tirela is expected to be 15 km in diameter, but with projection, the path will
be 23 km wide. The star is 5.5-mag. SAO 113186 = HIP 27560 , spectral type K0,
at J2000 RA 5h 50m 13.1s, Dec +04 deg. 25â 23â, about 3 deg. south of
Betelgeuse; a chart showing the path is at
http://www.asteroidoccultation.com/2020_01/0106_1400_67752_Finder15.gif but ;
weâll post some better charts on the occultationpages Web site tomorrow
(Saturday).
We have extra equipment to video record this occultation, simpler to operate
than the SwRI telescopes and cameras that were used for the Leucus occultation,
and could use your help to use it to record the occultation at your place, or
at a mobile site. If interested, let me know; you can pick up the equipment,
and we can show you how to use it to record the target star, at our place in
Fountain Hills, 2 blocks east of The Hills restaurant parking lot where we had
the Leucus occultation practice. You can meet us either late tomorrow (Sat.)
evening, or early Sunday evening, or later that night while we deploy stations
along North New River Road, and at sites near I-17 north of New River. If you
canât join this effort, you might still make a useful observation of the
eventâs duration by watching the star with binoculars and recording your
event calls with video recording using a smartphone, or better, point the
smartphone into a low-power eyepiece of your telescope to record the star. See
http://occultations.org/observing/ for basic observing and timing information. ;
David Dunham, dunham@xxxxxxxxxxxxx , 301-526-5590
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