Viipuri Lightcurve

A subset of the RECON network self-organized last week to measure an occultation by (2258) Viipuri the night of Friday, August 2 (August 3 UT).  Observers in Susanville, Greenville, Quincy, Portola, Carson City, and Gardnerville all participated.

Starting at 04:52:07UT, Buck Bateson in Susanville was ecstatic to see the target star drop in brightness for under 5 seconds. Below is a preliminary lightcurve that Jim Bean has generated from the Susanville data.

Viipuri Lightcurve Susanville

At the same time, Jim and others recorded anomalous but less conclusive data from a location roughly four miles south of Portola.  Meanwhile, approximately 40 seconds prior to this, Jerry Bardecker in Gardnerville measured a half second drop in intensity for the target star.

Before making a conclusive interpretation, we plan to take more time to reanalyze the data from all of the sites that contributed to this campaign.  However, it appears that Susanville and (possibly) Portola recorded main body of asteroid while Gardnerville may have recorded a smaller object orbiting along with Viipuri.

Thanks to all who have contributed to this campaign!  More to come!!!

 

 

 

3 thoughts on “Viipuri Lightcurve

  1. John;
    Just a correction; my recording did not show any light reduction, no blink.. So I reported a miss. Brad felt that my miss helped constrain the south pole of Viipuri.

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