The Occultation of a 12.2 Star by Asteroid (2379) Heiskanen

Thur eve Sept 10, 2026 at 9:04:56pm

OWc page

 

This is a long 4s event and decently bright. A good candidate for moonlet hunting. The path is wide and covers all of Santa Cruz County. The whole team is in the path.

Alt=31, Az=173 in Sagittarius, 12deg left and slightly above Nunki

     

 

Results:

Karl got on email too late to set up. Kirk and I got it from home...

Richard Nolthenius

I observed at 4x from home, under the palm tree. Got a roughly 9s positive recorded.

         

 

Kirk Bender

I got an obvious 11.5781s event for Heikanen on Sep.10, 2x from home. I originally used a min/max in PYOTE of 2/300 since it was predicted for 9.22 sec and I used 2x, but it gave an error, "Invalid solution: max event limit constrained solution", So I increased it to 2/500 and it found the 11.5781s event, longer than predicted.

NIE sigma distance = 48.8
magDrop report: percentDrop: 83.4  magDrop: 1.948  +/- 0.198  (0.95 ci)

DNR: 1.97

D time: [04:04:48.9665]
D: 0.6800 containment intervals:  {+/- 0.0189} seconds
D: 0.9500 containment intervals:  {+/- 0.0709} seconds
D: 0.9973 containment intervals:  {+/- 0.1650} seconds

R time: [04:05:00.5446]
R: 0.6800 containment intervals:  {+/- 0.0189} seconds
R: 0.9500 containment intervals:  {+/- 0.0709} seconds
R: 0.9973 containment intervals:  {+/- 0.1650} seconds

Duration (R - D): 11.5781 seconds
Duration: 0.6800 containment intervals:  {+/- 0.0308} seconds
Duration: 0.9500 containment intervals:  {+/- 0.0866} seconds
Duration: 0.9973 containment intervals:  {+/- 0.1835} seconds