Mid-July Light Curves

Much of the network was clouded out for the two mid-July events, (1177) Gonnessia and (240) Vanadis.  Nevertheless, two teams were fortunate enough to capture an occultation: Quincy and Cedarville respectively.

For Gonnessia, Greenville recorded a miss and Quincy had a positive event.  This places the shadow path well north of the final IOTA prediction and somewhat south of the initial NA Low Magnitude prediction.  Here is the light curve from the occultation captured by Will Anderson and Charley Arrowsmith in Quincy.

Quincy: (1177) Gonnessia occults 2UCAC29545635

The predicted shadow path may have been more accurate on the next night for Vanadis.  Below is the light curve from the 6.373 second occultation captured by Brian Cain and Terry Miller in Cedarville.

Cedarville: (240) Vanadis occults 2UCAC 23001849

Nemesis in the North

At a very civilized hour Friday evening November 1, 2013, the asteroid (128) Nemesis is predicted to occult 2UCAC 30123334 (Sat. 2 Nov. 4:01 UT).  In Plumas County (Quincy, Greenville, and Portola) we are planning to use it as a warm-up for Iduna a week later.  We are near the southern edge pf the predicted shadow path so this event also presents an opportunity for the RECON communities to our north.OW-NemesisMap

The magnitude of the star is actually less than that of the asteroid so the light curve will be shallow.  Full details of the occultation are online at
www.asteroidoccultation.com/2013_11/1102_128_30282.htm
The field is mildly challenging because it is relatively sparse and faint.  Nemesis field

AAVSO charts

I found that the AAVSO charts that were posted for the Isolda event were a useful adjunct to the others provided from asteroidoccultation.com.  Here are three similar charts for the upcoming Pluto event.  If you want to make your own, visit http://www.aavso.org/vsp and set your own parameters.  This is also an easy way to make charts that are reversed or in another orientation.

The 1-degree chart only goes to 14th magnitude so the target star is not shown, but the other two go to 15th magnitude.
— Charley Arrowsmith

1degree   30minutes   18.5minutes