It will be the occultation of a 16.2-mag. star near Aldebaran that is expected
to occur in a path crossing the USA around 8:36 UT of November 1 st . Itâs a
Lucky Star event with the 550-km Trans-Neptunian Object 2005 RR43. Although the
star is faint, observations of the occultation with large telescopes would be
valuable and are strongly encouraged. The predicted n. limit is over
Philadelphia and York, PA with the s. limit at South of the Border, SC (In the
west, the central line is over Phoenix, n. limit well north of L.A., & s. limit
s. of El Paso and Nogales, AZ, but the uncertainties are large enough that
anywhere in the USA, as well as most of Canada and Mexico, has a chance for an
occultation for this Lucky Star event; details are at
http://www.kuriwaobservatory.com/Lucky_Star/20191101_082570_summary.html and, ;
with an interactive finder chart, at the bottom of the Lucky Star page for the
event at http://lesia.obspm.fr/lucky-star/occ.php?p841. This could be a target
of RECON, but so far, it is not listed on their observation campaigns page;
perhaps it should be, since Lucky Star was able to update the prediction to a
fairly reasonable (for a TNO) rank 14. The Lucky Star Web site, and the OW line
for the event in the Lucky Star OW feed, have interactive maps of the path, the
latter of which I used to create some static maps of the path across the USA
that will be posted later this morning on a Web page for the event at
http://iota.jhuapl.edu/TNOn01.htm . Also there will be a series of finder ;
charts that I created with Guide8 and Aladin (from the bottom of the Lucky Star
page for the event).
_ _ _ _
A central occultation should last 25.5 seconds with a strong 4-mag. drop, if
your system is able to record the star. The expected time of the occultation is
8:35 UT in the eastern time zone (4:35am EDT); 8:36 UT in the central zone
(3:36am CDT); 8:37 UT in the mountain time zone (2:37am MDT, or 1:37am MST in
Arizona); 8:38 UT in the Pacific time zone (1:38am PDT, and also 12:38am
Alaskan time); and 8:40 UT in Hawaii (10:40pm Oct. 31 HST). But the 1-sigma
time error is 3.3 minutes, and satellites or rings of the object could occult
the star for at least 10 times its diameter, so if you can, you should record
for as much as half an hour, from 15 min. before the closest approach time to
15 min. after it. The central 15 minutes is most important, so try not to have
any interruptions (or minimize them) during that time.
_ _ _ _
As can be seen from the event Web sites, the star, UCAC4 515-008257, is at
J2000 R.A. 4h 38m 21.0s, Dec. +12 deg. 56' 40", in Taurus about 5 deg. south of
Aldebaran. The target star is also about half a degree north of 4.2-mag. 90
Tauri = SAO 94044. 7.0-mag. SAO 94053 is about 15' to the east.
If observations are obtained, whether positive or negative, they should be
reported both to
IOTA (reports@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx - preferably with the pre-filled Excel
report form that
OccultWatcher generates) and to J. Desmars at the Lucky Star Project (
josselin.desmars@xxxxxxxx ).
David Dunham, e-mail: dunham@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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