As told in the July 2014 Sky & Telescope, on the morning of July 19th an 8.7-magnitude star in Pisces will vanish for up to 4 seconds behind the invisibly faint asteroid 611 Valeria, as seen from a track crossing northern Mexico, Texas, the Deep South including the Atlanta area, and the Carolinas. The occultation will happen within a couple minutes of 9:10 UT in Texas and 9:12 UT in the Carolinas, where dawn will be getting under way.

Here are a map of the track, finder charts for the star, predicted times, and more details.


Looking beyond, here is Steve Preston's pick of the best asteroid occultations worldwide for 2014.

And Preston's master list of many more asteroid occultation predictions.

To learn about today's asteroid-occultation timing world and to join the fun, see Worldwide Asteroidal Occultation Observations and Resources. Video is now the standard timing method. For information on video recording and precise time extraction, see the "Equipment" heading.

For actual human advice and help, join the International Occultation Timing Association (IOTA) Yahoo discussion group, say hi, and ask.

Here are results of past timing campaigns (in the "Results of Observations" box at top).

Free e-book: Chasing the Shadow: The IOTA Occultation Observer’s Manual (the preview page).

Comments


Image of Stephen Gagnon

Stephen Gagnon

May 30, 2014 at 8:27 pm

It would be nice if the URL in the July magazine (p.51) brought you here rather that 404ing you. Someone forget to program the server redirect?

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