Lunar occultations

Review/update on recent

developments

• 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

IOTA taking over from ILOC

• 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 - background

• 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

Double stars – report cycle

• 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 - asteroidals

• 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 Preds

• 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 Obs

• 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)

Doubles – Occult support – Lunar Anal

• 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

Kaguya lunar profiles