Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
May 2011
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011aas...21822411p&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #218, #224.11; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
We attempted to observe the 10 February 2011 occultation of a star of UCAC2 magnitude 15.5 by the Kuiper-belt object (20000) Varuna (visual magnitude 20.2), to determine its size, albedo, and other basic properties. Our original predictions showed the path going between Hawaii and Alaska, but SMARTS astrometry a month before the event moved the prediction 1,646 km north, so we added sites in the northwestern continental US and Alaska. We had clear weather at several sites in the predicted path (Alaska, Pacific Northwest), another site in the 1-sigma path (California), and several sites near the 3-sigma path (Hawaii, China, Taiwan, Japan), though no occultation was detected. Clouds or other problems prevented observations at several other sites. The appulse observations will be used to improve the ephemeris for future Varuna observations. See http://occult.mit.edu/research/occultations/kbo/Varuna/Varuna.20110210/index.html and stellaroccultations.info.
This work was supported, in part, by grants NNX10AB27G to MIT and NNX08AO50G to Williams College from NASA's Planetary Astronomy Division. We thank Don Hampton of the Poker Flat Research Range, Alaska, for his assistance.
Babcock Bryce A.
Bai Jinming
Bianco Federica B.
Breit D.
Chen Wang-Ping
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