Lunar occultations

1
Lunar occultations

• Review/update on recent developments

2
IOTA taking over from ILOC

• 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

3
Double stars - background

• 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

4
Double stars report cycle

• 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

5
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

6
Doubles Occult support - asteroidals

• 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)

7
Doubles Occult support Lunar Preds

• Complete revision of double star files (100 more
  pairings!)
• Predictions include alert messages separations
  lt2
• Ability to directly access double details from
  Occult (predictions and observations)
• Complete double details in graze prediction

8
Doubles Occult support Lunar Obs

• Ability to generate a double star report
  containing information needed to analyse the
  double star, and to email it to Brian Loader.

9
Doubles Occult support Lunar Anal

• 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)

10
Kaguya lunar profiles

• 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.

11
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