Asteroid Massalia Occultation, Nov 17

[Cosmic Geoff]

Did anyone try observing the predicted occultation of a faint star by the asteroid Massalia on 17th Nov 2017 at around 01.30 am? I saw a prediction and tried to observe it, but was defeated by my telescope misting up after a long spell in the open, despite a dew shield.

[Phil Fargaze]

If the conditions were good I would have tried for this, although my location near to London was not expected to see a positive event. I noticed it was mentioned in Astronomy Now November issue page 71. To be honest, with it being just a mag 0.2 drop it would not have been very obvious  and a bit underwhelming. I have not seen any results come forward for this either from the UK or across Europe. Funnily enough I managed a positive result on Sunday November 19th at 5:36 am involving the asteroid (18) Melpomene. This was a mag 0.7 drop which was just discernible on the laptop monitor. I was recording the event with a Watec video camera. There is a good web page for asteroidal predictions based on the target star being brighter than mag 9 which is updated monthly. See here. Both the Massalia and Melpomene events are featured.  Edit:- The prediction page does state brighter than mag 9 but I have just noticed that it goes fainter, however it is still a good reference for a summary of what is coming up.