The Occultation of a W=13.0 Star by Asteroid ( 6452) Johneuller

July 18, 2026 at 10:18:59pm

OWc page

 

This is a difficult event, might not be doable given the low altitude of 16 degrees. But the duration permits long integrations up to 16x. I'm thinking it would be a good 2-fer with also trying to lear the new iPad operation of the Askhar / ASIair astrophotography gear we have, from Pineridge cul-de-sac.

alt=16, az=124 in Capricorn.

Sites: It's also fine from Twin Gates, from southern Scotts Valley, and Karl is just north of the northern limit.

     

 

Results:

Richard Nolthenius

I planned well, got to Cabrillo to load astrophoto equipment in plenty of time - but the gate to the road to the observatory was locked and dysfunctional. I had to run up the road and get all the pounds of gear and schlep it slowly back down to my car on Soquel. Lost a lot of time. Didn't arrive at Pineridge cul-de-sac till dark. Got set up, 2-star align, sent to target, which was behind one of the few trees that could cause trouble! I unplugged everything, schlepped the telescope to a new spot, set up again, all very efficient, did a good GoTo the target, ID'd the field fired up the computer and started recording...... 4 second AFTER the event! I missed it by 4 seconds. I recorded anyway for another 2 minutes. Who knows, maybe a moonlet might happen?

Afterwards, did astrophotography with Will, who showed off his new $20k rig. Amazing images of almost Hubble quality. We tried to get the razor thin "gravel trail" from Comet Temple, but it did not show up on his 10 mins of images. At 1am we bailed out, due to clouds, being tired, and I could not operate my own Askar rig because one critical cable had wandered out of the cable box. I found it when I got home.

Kirk Bender had a cloud-hindered 1s positive. I notice that a few sec later there is another dip which may be noise, but a few sec later is when my own recording begins. Could that dip appear on my own recording too? I had no clouds at my higher site. I've not reduced my data yet.

         
       

 

 

Kirk Bender

Got a positive from Twin Gates.I got a 1 sec event for Johneuller, 8x at twin gates, July 18.
There were clouds coming in low around the target, and there was a lot of variability in the light curves, but after normalizing I got an event near predicted time. Event duration is a little longer than predicted 0.81s, but within error bars.  It looked clear enough near event time, but In hindsight I maybe should have used 16x, the clouds could have gotten too thick, but then the error bars would have been wider.  I found a small size 2.0 aperture in PyMovie gave the best results, with an NIE sigma distance of 3.5.


magDrop report: percentDrop: 73.0  magDrop: 1.421  +/- 0.770  (0.95 ci)

DNR: 1.86

D time: [05:18:59.1443]
D: 0.6800 containment intervals:  {+/- 0.0792} seconds
D: 0.9500 containment intervals:  {+/- 0.3363} seconds
D: 0.9973 containment intervals:  {+/- 0.7396} seconds

R time: [05:19:00.2120]
R: 0.6800 containment intervals:  {+/- 0.0792} seconds
R: 0.9500 containment intervals:  {+/- 0.3363} seconds
R: 0.9973 containment intervals:  {+/- 0.7396} seconds

Duration (R - D): 1.0677 seconds
Duration: 0.6800 containment intervals:  {+/- 0.1337} seconds
Duration: 0.9500 containment intervals:  {+/- 0.3805} seconds
Duration: 0.9973 containment intervals:  {+/- 0.8099} seconds

       

 

Karl von Ahnen

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