Observation by Alex Pratt: (940) Kordula occults UCAC4 577-017001

Uploaded by

Alex Pratt

Observer

Alex Pratt

Observed

2020 Nov 27 - 23:46

Uploaded

2020 Nov 29 - 12:01

Objects

Conjunction

Equipment

C11 f/10 and f/3.3 focal reducer
Watec 910 video camera
IOTA-VTI GPS time inserter
OccuRec (recording)
Tangra and AOTA (reduction)

Exposure

0.32s

Location

Z92

Target name

(940) Kordula occults UCAC4 577-017001

Title

(940) Kordula occults UCAC4 577-017001

About this image

Mag 14.1 outer main-belt asteroid (940) Kordula, 80 km in diameter, was predicted to occult a mag 14.4 star in Taurus on the night of 2020 November 27. Observers within the 96 km wide shadow track could see them merge with a combined mag. of 13.5, then drop in brightness by 0.6 mag. for up to 6.7s.

My site was inside the predicted shadow zone, with 43% probability of success. I had to use a high gain setting for this magnitude, which combined with the strong Moonlight produced a noisy recording capturing the brief disappearance of the target star, for 4.8s. The attached screenshot shows the analysis of the light curve using Tangra and AOTA. Thanks to Eric Frappa (European occultations coordinator) for improving my provisional analysis, giving timings of:

D - 23 46 48.51 ± 0.40
R - 23 46 53.31 ± 0.24

Other observers were clouded out, but a single chord adds to information on the asteroid's diameter and the mid-time of the occultation is used for an astrometric measurement of its position.

Files associated with this observation

(940) Kordula 20201127_234648_ARP.png (140.0 kB)

Like this image

Eric Watkins, Jeremy Shears, Dr Andrew Smith, Philip Masding, Graham Winstanley, Dr Paul Leyland, David Basey, Tim Haymes, Peter Carson

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