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Apologies that this event is not listed on the BAA Handbook Lunar Occ page, it should have been. A prediction setting that i used was incorrect. (Fixed now!). The omission was only noticed after publication.
I will be using an IR pass filter for imaging. For my mobile goto telescope it should be possible to set up the alignment with stars before sunrise. I might do that and keep the rig running. Early acquisition of Venus would be a bonus.
Thanks Nick/All – this is encouraging. I will continue investigations with CMOS. My test images were not taken under best conditions. I hope the image above of PQ And (one of many) illustrates the image profile im using to learn HOPS. Not ideal but it works. It isnt saturated according to AstoArt
Tim
Here goes. Ah! it seem to take a long time before its available to insert. I may have made a second comment…sorry
PQ was at alt 8deg, and managed a sequence of FITS from 1.30 to 3 am BST. BUT I dont know what to do with the data. However i have a memamsured image giving a R mag of 10.5 using UCAC4. I dont know how one gets V mag with a filter. Where do you get the ensemble photometry data for V (or G)? My image is attached (single image in Astrometrica).. I hope
The browser is not playing ball.There were some other observers in England. I was just south of the path in Oxfordshire and Phil Denyer in N London who was on a close chord to myself. We observed no event by video. Simon Kidd north of Stevenage recorded a long positive of 8 sec as did a nearby colleague of his with 9 sec. (durations are preliminary)
Loughborough was expected to be in the shadow path, so it was a close appulse.
Tim
I have measured it at 12.7 (unfiltered CCD) using the AAVSO chart (X25129DUM) and AstroArt 5. The telescope was the CHI-1 (Chile) on the Telescope Live network (Planewave CDK24, 60sec) – date 2020-02-03.360
Thanks for your input gentlemen. Yes, the observing slit and zenith view are on my query list. Also the view to the Southern horizon is a bit limited without some additional design work inside. I have a good horizon, and would like to make full use of it.
I now have an invite to visit a member’s 2.7m dome. The Scopedome 3m is also on my short list.
Thanks again for your general comments.
Tim
I grabbed some frames last night between clouds and found the asteroid with 200mm F2,8 lens. Image show the rapid motion over about 20mins. Ive added it to my album on this site. Thanks to David and Nick for the thread on this interesting NEO.
I saw one demonstrated at the Amateur Astronomy Centre, Todmorden. Visitors were able to take pictures of the moon easily through their 16″ Meade – Thanks to Peter Drew who invited me over.
Thank you Grant
UT: 2019-07-26, 0007Hr 53s RA 19h 44m 27s, DEC -06d 53′ 54″ (J2000)
rate of motion: 1’arc/min, magnitude 10 to 13 erraticThanks for the tip Grant. I need to ask around to see who has a copy, and who might offer to solve it for me.
I did download a command line program IDsat, but it assumes i know the ID. And the data input was hard going. So looking for a more user friendly solution.
Cheers, Tim
The weather was better for me, and I recorded 16 event in 3 hrs. Thanks for the challenge Paul – it was a good night apart from some drifting con-trails.
I was also concerned by updates and stability, I now run most of my astro software on HP W10 i5 recycled business laptop from CeX, with card reader, DVD, one USB3 and 2xUSB2, 250Gb SSD. No problem. The card reader provides extra capacity for data. I can avoid unexpected updates by keeping it in airplane mode. It will update when reconnecting to the internet, so i keep an eye open for the “feature updates” and just allow them to install when the laptop is not in use. I also set the “no install” period to include night hours”.
So I find W10 fine, I ignore the fancy patchwork shortcuts. I put all the apps in the tray. It looks like W7. There is also a registry hack that will put the seconds display into the clock if you so wish (I found it on the internet). In the system folder there is Internet explorer. You can use this instead of Edge if you prefer it.
The windows 10 OS is better designed on timing issues, there are fewer, or better controlled interrupts (compared to XP and W7). This would benefit software requiring UT, and the reliable timing of fast data collection.
Ive not used linux or Wine.
There were two readings I took recently that prompted my question. Thank you all, and I am pleased that i can feel confident of an improvement as the night goes on for the reasons given. My two readings were on March 29th
2103 UT (Sun -21) SQM 19.8
2315 UT (Sun -33) SQM 20.2The best sky readings here is 20.3
Cheers
I didnt see the program, but a quick search of the internet indicate you are not alone thinking this:
https://www.space.com/25179-hubble-constant.html
“As of January 2018, measurements from multiple telescopes showed that the rate of expansion of the universe is different depending on where you look. The nearby universe (measured by the Hubble Space Telescope and Gaia space telescope) has a rate of expansion of 45.6 miles per second (73.5 kilometers per second) per megaparsec, while the more distant background universe (measured by the Planck telescope) is a bit slower, expanding at 41.6 miles per second (67 km per second) per megaparsec”
This could be a significant observation.
On this subject I use: https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=9&lat=6724317&lon=-84999&layers=B0FFFFTFFFT
I have compared my measured SQM-L readings at places in Berks/Bucks and Oxon and find a reasonable good correlation with the map in the range 20.2 to 20.9. I use the LP map to spec out places to observe from. Ive not done an Orion count from the 20.8 locations, but i hope to do this.This is a really nice image showing an egress at eclipse. Thanks for sharing Steve. I was clouded out
I didnt have much trouble finding the star with WAT-910HX and 30cm. I did a goto to a nearby bright star, focused, synced and then offset to Xanthippe and there it was ! Just where skymap plotted it. This was about 45 min before hand as i didnt want to risk having a problem and no time to sort it. I did a dummy recording and was OK. The asteroid was detected at mag 13.5. (star at 11.9). The asteroid moved closer and then “star gone”. The video recorded a duration of 5.70 seconds at 25fps in good conditions. Some observed chords are now on EURASTER.NET
Sorry some of you had some bad luck with technical issues. It was a clear night here, but seeing stability was abysmal. The ARPS section has received over 12 observations.
The IOTA North America web site has many useful publications and links to occultation observing techniques. There may not be much info’ on the use of USB-CCD planetary cameras in these publications. Only with Windows 8 and 10 does the timing facility of these systems become more reliable (another story). Anyway we are not looking for exact UT for 104 Tau to help solve the double star question. (in my view). We will use a light curve measured from an AVI recording.
Visual impressions would also be nice too, if no video camera is available. All observations sent to the BAA Lunar Section will be acknowledged.
Hello Lars,
Thanks for publicizing this occultation. The dark limb reappearance for an observer in Aalborg is 0304h 12s UT and the cusp angle in 29 S. Someone with some experience in Lunar occultations who is able to use a planetary camera (or team up) would be equipped to record the star appearing. The observer would need a field of view of say 1/3 degree to be sure of including the limb where the star appears. I would suggest a frame rate of 25fps or 30fps. from 0303 to 0305 hrs. If this is successful then we can do some photometry – i would need a copy of the AVI or SER file.
There is only one previous recording of the star being occulted (by Brian Loader – NZ) and it was not double, or not time resolved. We seek further recordings. This event is one of the last few opportunities, then the saros ends in 2019. If you are Lunar observer (Imager?), perhaps your experience can help others observes to record the occultation. I am too far South to attempt this.
Good luck and clear skies – Tim (Reading, UK)
