Excellent prospects for UK asteroid occultation Thursday night, 25th July 2019

[lukebl]

There's an excellent opportunity to view the occultation of a relatively bright star (mag 11) by a relatively large asteroid, 489 Comacina, on Thursday night/Friday morning. For me it's at 01:14:58 BST on 26th July.

With it having a diameter of about 140 km, the occultation path is quite wide, covering much of southern England, and the occultation is quite long, up to 10 seconds. Since I got into occultations a couple of years ago, almost every event has been clouded out, but the prospects look good for Thursday night and I'm on the centre line. The predicted occultation is between the blue lines below.

 

[John]

Thanks. Looks like I'm just within the northern extent of the occulation path.

[Stu]

Thanks very much. I'm pretty close to the centre line. Might give it a go, just need to get to mag 11!!

[lukebl]

Damn. Thunderstorms now predicted for tonight. The weather demons are always interfering with my attempts to capture occultations!

[Paul73]

Thanks for posting.

This would be the star hop challenge of the year (no GoTo here)!

Paul

[Stu]

I really would like to give this a go. If it looks reasonable I'll use the Mewlon on my GP-DX with Skysensor/Skysafari to get on it. Not sure what my limiting magnitude will be with the Mewlon so unsure if I'll catch the asteroid itself. Worth a try anyway, if I stay awake!

[lukebl]

Two hours to go and these wretched French thunderstorms look like they'll prevent play tonight!

Impressive thunderbolts and lightning though. A view from the obs. Canon 6d, 30s exposure, ISO200, 35mm f/22.

[Stu]

Such a shame, no thunder here, but there is high haze around and there's no way I will find anything!

[Jforson]

8 minutes ago, lukebl said:

Two hours to go and these wretched French thunderstorms look like they'll prevent play tonight!

Impressive thunderbolts and lightning though. A view from the obs. Canon 6d, 30s exposure, ISO200, 35mm f/22.

Fantastic photo, very atmospheric!

[Marvin Jenkins]

Why are they French thunderstorms they are over your obsy.😂

[Littleguy80]

Similar to Luke, my skies were entertaining, just not in the way I hoped. I do love a good storm though. Best of my iPhone pics below.

[lukebl]

On 27/07/2019 at 08:01, Marvin Jenkins said:

Why are they French thunderstorms they are over your obsy.😂

No offence meant! It's just that I was watching the storms brewing up over Rouen and Amiens on the satellite map, and then they all marched north!

[Marvin Jenkins]

No offence taken, from what I can gather all this super hot weather is caused by an unusual position of the jet stream. If you believe in climate change being man made then we are all to blame, if not it is just part of natural weather patterns. All I know is that it has rained here for the first time in over a month which is most welcome. 

M

[barkis]

By the time the countries most responsible for Global Warming realise that  the world is in the  extreme danger that climate change will produce, the changes in our weather are proof positive, and it will be soon become an irreversible situation.    Stupidity beyond belief.  They selfishly remain blind to the inevitable.  

Ron.