Observation by Tim Haymes: Going Mobile for Asteroid Occs.

Uploaded by

Tim Haymes

Observer

Tim Haymes

Observed

2022 Jan 12 - 00:00

Uploaded

2022 Jan 15 - 22:40

Objects

5022 Roccapalumba
Lightcurve
Equipment

Equipment
  • C11+QHY174gps
  • 120mm refractor + WAT910HX
Exposure

80ms

Location

Oxfordshire

Target name

(5022) Roccapalumba occults UCAC4 471-038681

Title

Going Mobile for Asteroid Occs.

About this image

The shadow of 34km diameter Roccapalumba passed across my home location where i was able to record it occult the star with my C11. ( Prediction with Occult4 software and Gaia data release).   I was using a USB3 camera at 80ms exposure.  There was a good opportunity to set up a mobile telescope to get second set of observations from a position near the middle of the shadow.  The star was 10.7 magnitude and well placed near the head of Hydra.

I used a second telescope (EQ6) with a 4.5" Helios refractor. The C11 was set to start a scheduled recording while I drove about 11 miles to a carpark to set up the refractor and video camera. (pictured)

The inset show the two light curves overlapped. The 120mm is the more noisy recording and the duration is longer.  The duration times were 1.36 sec and 2.00 sec

I believe this is the first report of a dual-chord asteroid observation by single UK based observer. (Not the first world-wide though.)   There may be other opportunities coming up.  For e.g. (212) Medea on Jan 21    https://britastro.org/node/26482

 

Files associated with this observation
Like this image
Comments
Mazin Younis
Mazin Younis, 2022 Jan 15 - 23:41 UTC

Amazing work, well-done Tim 

Tim Haymes
Tim Haymes, 2022 Jan 17 - 10:39 UTC

Thank you Mazin - it was an adventure. 

I also made a voice recording of the event on my mobile phone, with time "clicks" using my Cassio wave-captor. [ I use audio as a backup medium.]  By playing the audio file in Audacity i obtained the same duration of 2.0 sec.   Comparing with the video, my reaction time was 0.6 sec.  There is a time lag from video to computer screen and this is included in the overall reaction delay.  

Clear skies...

Copyright of all images and other observations submitted to the BAA remains with the owner of the work. Reproduction of work by third parties is expressly forbidden without the consent of the copyright holder. By submitting images to this online gallery, you grant the BAA permission to reproduce them in any of our publications.