Varsavia asteroid occultation

Varsavia asteroid occults star HIP 68516 at 11:03 pm PDT on Thursday July 17, 2003 PDT

It was a great opportunity Thursday night to see the 6.4 magnitude star HIP 68516 blink out for just under 2 seconds occulted by the asteroid Varsavia. If you check out the map on Steve Preston's website you will see that Victoria was right in the middle of the shadow path. Full details here: (1263) Varsavia - HIP 68516 event on 2003 Jul 18, 0603 UT

It doesn't get better than that, and the weather was near perfect

Dave Bennett and myself had been preparing for this event for a couple of weeks. We planned to measure the duration of the occultation using a sensitive video head called an Astrovid 2000. The poor video head has been sitting idle just waiting for an event such as this! A more complete report is forthcoming from several RASC Victoria observers.

I highly recommend viewing future occultations even if you don't do any measurements. You can use 7x50 or larger binoculars or a small telescope. Try to get out early ... so you can find and confirm you have the right star. If you feel ambitious you can read up on how to do the measurement and add to the data being collected by numerous amateurs along the orbital path.
 

Clear skies!
David Lee

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