Asteroid Lemaître occultation video 15th October 2022

[lukebl]

Asteroid Lemaitre is just 8 kilometres wide, with an eccentric Mars-crossing orbit. It was discovered on 25 November 1948, by Belgian astronomer Sylvain Arend at the Royal Observatory of Belgium.

On the evening of 15th October, I was right under the shadow path of its occultation of an 11th magnitude star (TYC 2908_00765_1), and managed to capture this short footage of the event which lasted just 0.8 of a second.

Captured with a WATEC 910 video camera, Timestamped with a GPSBOXSPRITE3, 250mm f/4.8 Newtonian, 0.5x reducer.

It is a strange feeling, watching in real time as a tiny invisible rock millions of miles away briefly blots the light of a distant star.

Here's its orbit

Edited October 17, 2022 by lukebl

[Space Hopper]

Fascinating stuff.

Great capture ; i love things like this 👍🏼

 

[Paul M]

That's an excellent result!

 

[Peter Drew]

Right place, right time!       

[Kon]

Impressive capture!

[FenlandPaul]

That’s a fantastic capture - fascinating. There’s something about watching an occultation that really puts you in touch with the colossal scale of the universe!