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Primarily for observers in South West UK:Subject: [Norman Lockyer Observatory] Contact Us
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Name:
Damya Souami
Email:
damya.souami@obspm.fr
Comment:
Hello,
My name is Damya Souami. I am a researcher at the Observatory of Paris,. I am reaching out about a challenging (twilight and relatively high airmass) occultation event observable from your observatory.The event is a stellar occultation by an outer solar system object that belongs to the dynamical class called the Damocloids. It is a highly eccentric (0.954) and retrograde orbit ( inclination ~125°).
On August 18th UT around 22:20 UT, 2013LU28 will be occulting a 13.1 mag star. Here is the detailed prediction https://lesia.obspm.fr/lucky-star/occ.php?p=124677 . On this page you will find the star’s coordinates as well as an interactive sky map (using Aladin).
This event is very important because of the nature of the object. The event will last at most 5.7s.
The challenging part is the fact that this event will be happening during twilight, at the the star is relatively low. The conditions (in terms of elevation) are more favourable in the UK and Ireland.
At your location, the conditions are the following elevation h10.5, azimuth A344.8, hour angle H:10h29m.I hope there are no trees or building … or other constraints preventing you for pointing the telescope.
If you do have a fast camera, make some tests the nights before and try too et an SNR of (ideally) 5 to 10 on the star.
Observations at your location must be done between 22:10 to 22:25.If this event is technically observable from any of your telescopes, I’ll be happy to exchange on the instrumental setup.
In case you are going through with the observation, please do not hesitate to involve students or amateurs.All observers who participate to our campaigns are considered as collaborators, and are co-authors to our science papers.
Cheers,
Damya—
This campaign is carried out under the “Lucky Star” umbrella. Lucky Star is an EU-funded research activity that agglomerates the efforts of the Paris, Granada and Rio teams. You might be contacted by different people from these three groups, but we are all working together. See Lucky Star web page for details:
http://lesia.obspm.fr/lucky-star/——————————————————————————————————————
Dr. Damya Souami — Ph.D in Celestial Mechanics
Fulbright Visiting Scholar (2022 – 2023) at UC Berkeley
CNRS Researcher (Chargée de Recherche) at LESIA/ Observatoire de ParisMember of the ACROSS (collaborative occultation observations for NEAs) ESA funded project – https://lagrange.oca.eu/fr/home-across
Member of the ERC Lucky Star project http://lesia.obspm.fr/lucky-star/
Affiliated with: NAXYS – Namur Center for Complex Systems-, UNamur, Belgium.
ca.linkedin.com/in/damyasouami/David,
Thanks for the alert for this TNO !
There are a some us in ARPS who hope to observe this, and the more observers we have, the better the chances of a success.If no occultation is recorded this is as important as a positive. From Oxfordshire the altitude is 12 degrees and with my mobile 8″ F/4 i should be able to reach this star in 0.5 sec on a CMOS mono camera (FITS is preferred by Pro-am). I will aim for a S/N of 5 at least, which is the minimum to clearly confirm a detection or not.
I have a rule-of-thumb (or eye), that provided the star image is above the noise (or transparency) threshold of the camera/scope and “visible” on the monitor throughout the recording period, this should provide the S/n desired. This can be tested by dropping the exposure down until the image is unclear and then increasing it enough to become a stable image. The mid-time for UK is 2218 UT and i would suggest recording for a minimum of 2 min either side (4 minutes in all). That would be about 240 FITS files. Test images on stars of mag 14 would be a guide.
Timing the frames can be done using the computer clock recently synched to NTP. Timing data will be put in the FITS header by the recording software.
Best of luck David, and to all observers,
Tim
Asteroids and Remote Planets Section (Occultations)
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