2024 April 28/19 Occultation of EI Tauri by (253) Mathilde - Help complete NEAR's work - New 2024 April 24
This important occultation is described in this April 17th message and in this one-page flyer that was shown at the North East Astronomy Forum. Some useful files about the event are below. Occult Map of the event. Detailed Map of the path over the Carolinas. UT and circumstances now expanded to 7 locations. Google Earth file with 7 parallel fence lines to be used by mobile observers to select observing sites within 1 km of one of these assigned lines, as described in this document by John Irwin (but the color coding is different with our Google Earth file - green is the central line, blue show the predicted limits, red show the 1-sigma limits, and the fence lines, 3 on each side of center, are yellow. The star, EI Tauri, is at J2000 RA 5h 46m 56.5s, Dec +17d 54' 31", which is 12.7' norhtwest. of 5th-mag. 130 Tauri and 3.8 deg. southwest of 3rd-mag. zeta Tauri, shown in the finder charts given below: Naked Eye View, Zenith up to mag. 5.5 Mighty Mini/Finder Scope View, Zenith up to mag. 9.0 The rectangle is about 2 deg. high and 3 deg. wide; typical finder scopes have a FOV about 5 deg. across Guide9 Direct View, North up to mag. 15 The very deep Aladin charts from OW cloud are below, but they show only a small area north of 130 Tauri (which is then not on these) with more detail than you will likely need - the target star is marked with a purple "+" in the center and its J2000 coordinates are given in purple in the upper left. Aladin 0.5 deg. direct view, north up Aladin 0.5 deg. reversed view, north up (for single-reflection systems) The images below were taken with a QHY 174 GPS camera on an 11-in. SCT with hyperstar; the FOV is about that shown on the Guide9 chart above and north is up in these views. 2-sec. exposure, direct view shows stars to about mag. 15 This exposure is too long, but you might want long exposures to verify the target's ID. 2-sec. exposure, original (same as above, but reversed view, since our optical system has only one reflection, and yours may, also. 50-millesec exposure, same orientation as above, shows stars to about mag. 13; this is a good exposure if you have a similar system and sky conditions are good; otherwise, you may need 100-millisec exposures, or use the Sharpcap Fastocc profile (200-millisec exposures). The current cloud cover forecasts show that the path over the central and eastern Carolinas are likely to have the clearest skies, but during the five days leading up to the event, there could be some changes that we'll distribute by e-mail. GFS forecast ECMWF forecast NWS forecast Since clear-enough conditions are expected for this rather bright star, I hope that we can get some good observations of this event. We've checked, and during the next 5 years, there are few occultations by this asteroid that will be visible from North America; there's only one other good event for us before 2030, this occultation of a 9.5-mag. star across the northern USA on 2025 February 20, when the weather is more likely to be unfavorable. David and Joan Dunham, 2024 April 24. e-mail: dunham@starpower.net cell phone: 301-526-5590