On 2014 March 7 at 0308UT, (Night of March 6/7) the main belt asteroid (9) Metis (diameter 200km) occults a v7.9 star in Libra, HIP 78193. This favourable event (99%) is visible over much of the UK & Ireland and presents an ideal opportunity to record an asteroid occultation visually. Observe from 0306 to 0310 UT. Finder charts can be found on asteroidoccultation.com
http://www.asteroidoccultation.com/2014_03/0307_9_32274.htm
The maximum duration is predicted to be 24.5sec. and the magnitude drop is 3.3 magnitudes. To a visual observer the star will disappear, although the asteroid should remain visible with larger
apertures, Video or CCD at magnitude 11. Observers situated near the edge of the occultation path will experience shorter durations. A Miss event should
be reported if no occultation was detected.Timings of the duration and UT of disappearance are desired over as wide an area as possible. Conditions allowing, this could be the first observation
of a Metis event for UK observers. There have been 11 observed occultations since the first reported in 1979. An event seen in California in 2008
was perhaps the best observed to date with 26 observations, with three observers operating an unattended video station.
Please send timed observations (Aim for an accuracy of 0.5 sec or better) to arps@britastro.org, including your name, instrument, timing method, and
your Google Earth co-ordinates. (Datum WGS84).
