Transcript Review and Update on Lunar Occultations

Lunar occultations
Review/update on
recent
developments
IOTA taking over from ILOC
• Implementation of collecting lunar
occultations working well
• In 2009 to date, 3190 observations
• Data errors - very rare
• Formal archiving – when graze
revision completed
• Thanks to regional coordinators
Double stars - background
• Lunar Occultations RGO & ILOC made no
corrections, and made no use of the data
• Discovery claims were frequently only known
within the occultation community. The
double star community were in ignorance.
• Maintaining accurate double star info is a
MAJOR task
Need to properly handle double stars
Double stars – report cycle
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Asteroidals – to regional coordinators
Lunars – ultimately to Brian Loader (NZ)
Papers written for JDSO (authorship etc..)
USNO picks up results from JDSO
Occult data periodically updated with latest
USNO data
Double stars – report cycle
• Key step – the writing of papers for the JDSO
• To assist, some ‘template’ papers have been
developed and ‘approved’ by USNO and JDSO
• Of course, variations are to be expected
• Important to ‘strike while the iron is hot’
• Peer review is part of the process. And that
means being able to handle ‘difficult’
questions
Doubles – Occult support - asteroidals
• Asteroidal predictions – a new indicator in
predictions that a star is a double
• Ability to directly access double details from
Occult (predictions and observations)
• Ability to list star catalogue equivalents
(important for JDSO paper)
Doubles – Occult support – Lunar Preds
• Complete revision of double star files (100%
more pairings!)
• Predictions include alert messages –
separations <2”
• Ability to directly access double details from
Occult (predictions and observations)
• Complete double details in graze prediction
Doubles – Occult support – Lunar Obs
• Ability to generate a double star report
containing information needed to analyse the
double star, and to email it [to Brian Loader].
Doubles – Occult support – Lunar Anal
• Ability to analyse observations to derive PA
and separation
• Includes ability to apply the lunar slope using
the Kaguya data
• Ability to list star catalogue equivalents
(important for JDSO paper)
Kaguya lunar profiles
• Data available from early November
• Key data is Laser altimeter data
• Altitude data has to be transformed into a
lunar limb profile
• Derived a fast & reliable way to do this.
Kaguya lunar profiles
• Created a replacement for the Watts
charts
• Ability to plot the hi-resolution data
• Fit to past grazes is excellent
• Occasionally the graze results show
inconsistencies with Kaguya