https://cloud.occultwatcher.net/search

[Ags]

I have been playing with this website today. It gives a veritable feast of minor planet occultations which I shall attempt to capture in due course.

https://cloud.occultwatcher.net/search

Due to the narrow shadows cast by minor planets, the site requires your precise location (it can remember several observing sites). Once you have set up a filter with your available aperture and other constraints, It shows you the possible occultations for a given date (not too far in the future). It turns out there's a lot of rock whizzing around up there. Here is what the search results look like (with location set to Buckingham Palace, no desire to advertise my own precise location to the internet!).

 

 

 

[PeterC65]

This looks like a well constructed website, and I'm always interested in finding different things to observe, but I'm not sure what it's telling me.

I get a list of minor planets / asteroids with their occultation date and time, but what is the occultation? I checked out one on Stellarium (Juewa) and at the date and time specified nothing seems to be happening to it. Is the minor planet / asteroid being occulted by the Earth, so that it goes dark for a period, or by something else (what)?

While the website is well constructed, I could find no explanation about what it does.

Forgive me if this is a dumb question. I'm obviously missing something.

 

[Ags]

The asteroid should be passing in front of a star at the stated time. Depending on the brightness of the star it may not be shown in stellarium. Also it's critical stellarium and occultwatcher are configured with exactly the same earthly location, and that both have the same ephemeris data.

But I have yet to try its predictions in practice. In all likelihood any event I try will be fully occulted by some inquisitive clouds.

Edited November 18 by Ags

[PeterC65]

OK, thanks. I'll have another look armed with this new information.

 

[PeterC65]

I assume what I could expect to see is the background star occulted by the minor planet / asteroid, so that the stars brightness reduces for a short time?

 

[Ags]

Correct - in the likely event the minor planet is too faint to see, it would look like the star disappears briefly. I will be trying to catch this in video though.

Edited November 18 by Ags

[PeterC65]

I've tried some more in Stellarium and can't see any stars being occulted (location is identical). Is there any way to get the website to list the ID of the star being occulted?

 

[PeterC65]

I've updated the Solar System object data in Stellarium and can now see Thisbe occulting a star (with no ID) on 17/1/25. So it's worth checking if there are any occultations happening during a session and having a look for them I think.

Thanks for the heads up.

 

[pjsmith_6198]

I started playing with the site after I read Ags post here.   If you look  below the Google Maps  box  there is a link in green that contains the asteroid and star name.    

 

 

 

For my search the star name is UCAC4 529-046777.    If you click the link it opens the window below

 

 

This looks like a interesting and challenging project.

 

Phil