Observations of the Medea occultation

Forums Asteroids 2022 Jan 21 – (212) Medea – a long-duration asteroidal occultation Observations of the Medea occultation

#585151
Alex Pratt
Participant

Many thanks to everyone who attempted an observation. Most were clouded out unfortunately, except that I was fortunate to record the occultation during a convenient gap in the fast-moving clouds. Simon Kidd (Cottered) observed a miss event. Jesus Delgado (Spain) recorded an occultation of 58s duration. I used the Occult program to obtain this profile of Medea.

The ellipse is fitted to only two well-separated chords, so regard it as a simplified representation of Medea’s true shape. Simon’s line delimits the eastern edge of the shadow track and suggests he was close to obtaining a brief ‘blink’ occultation. The asteroid’s shadow path was ~55 km to the east of the predicted track.

If only we’d had better weather to obtain more chords across Medea.