|
|
|
Site Map |
REPORTING OCCULTATION OBSERVATIONS From 2008 September 1 all Lunar occultations in RASNZ Occsec region will be collected by local co-ordnators and sent by them to a global co-ordinator. Timings of total and grazing Lunar occultations used to be collected by the International Lunar Occultation Centre (ILOC) but ILOC is ceasing to collect occultation observations because of funding constraints, and has asked IOTA to take over the responsibility. Under the new arrangements, you will now send your timings via your local Occultation Section's co-ordinator. This enables us to do a preliminary reduction of your timings and to quickly advise you of any problems. It also helps us keep track of how many occultation observations are being made in Australia and New Zealand. After completing a preliminary reduction the regional co-ordinator then batches your data with others and sends it on to IOTA global co-ordinator. Ultimately they will archived at the seven Astronomical Data Centers of VizieR where they are available for research. |
You can record your occultation timings in one of four ways:
Preferably use Occult V4.0.4 or later Occult Software but it is very Big - (24Mb to 100 Mb depending on which star catalogs you choose to use). Having the full Occult also enables you to predict events accurately for your site so that you can plan your observing schedule much more effectively. For reporting you can check the residuals yourself before sending to the co-ordinator.
Users with slow net access and who have Excel or Open Office should should consider using our new
Lunar Occultations Report Form
This does require that you have Excel or Open office available to fill in the form. (45kb download).
The Help file in the kit describes in more detail how to use the Excel form.
If you don't have Excel available but do have .Net framework you may prefer to download
Standalone Lunar Reporting Software.
This is a 175Kb download
which can be extracted to a suitable folder and run from there. This includes a help file.
LOW, the Lunar Occultation Workbench by Eric Limburg. This is in common use in many parts of the world, particularely Europe, and is being updated to use the same output formats as Occult for reporting and archiving. LOW also has prediction and other nice features (and like Occult is also big - about 90MB)
Accurately timed Lunar occultations, especially those where a double or multiple star is involved, are an especially valuable contribution to serious astronomy.
Some of you may have been using the old text file templates that used to be available. We are no longer supporting these, as they require manual transcription, and the Co-ordinators do not have enough time to provide this service, so please use one of the above options for all Lunar observations.
For Grazes anywhere please send Lunar forms by email the graze organiser who in turn should collate and forward to the Global Graze co-ordinator.
For Total Lunar events in New Zealand please send Lunar forms by email to the Section's NZ co-ordinator.
For Total Lunar events in Australia please send Lunar forms by email to the Section's AUS co-ordinator.
Their address are available in the tools above.
In all cases it is essential that observations are NOT REPORTED TWICE.
It is a good idea to collect observations and send a batch when you have a good number or at least once a month. Month end or at New moon are both good times.
After receiving your report, the regional co-ordinator will check it and carry out preliminary reductions, which will be sent back to you. Or if problems are found, is likely to check with you for any necessary corrections. Once any problems have been sorted out, observations will be converted to an Archive format and added to an Archive file held by the coordinator. These will be sent at regular intervals to the global coordinator for inclusion into a global archive for use in astronomical research.
Unlike total and grazing occultations, when you monitor a possible asteroidal occultation it is important to make a report whether you see an occultation or not. This is because even if you did not see the event, your observation might still be crucial in determining the diameter of the asteroid. For example, if you were just outside the area in which an occultation was observed, your observation may help define the southern or northern limit of the occultation band, thereby providing a constraint on the deduced size of the asteroid. There are many occasions where such negative observations have been crucial.
Observations you make should be recorded on our Minor Planet Occultation Report Form Excel .xls format With Instructions., or Minor Planet Occultation Report Form .txt format ,and forwarded to the MP co-ordinator for both NZ and AUS John Talbot with a copy to Graham Blow. If you see an occultation you should send a report immediately. Otherwise, send your reports in a batch at the end of each month.
In either case please do not delete any raw data such as video recordings before the co-ordinator has had a chance to check and reduce results as some issues may need you to revist raw data.
Please note that the MP forms are intended only for observers in Australia and New Zealand and Pacific Islands. If you are observing in other regions of the world you should contact your local reporting co-ordinator for correct forms to use.
| Australia/New Zealand | Europe | Japan | North America | Latin America |
All reports received are collated and published in our News Circulars.
All positive results are reduced and reports posted to this site.
See links on our Home Page for recent ones.
Where sufficient positive observations of an event are obtained a full analysis is also carried out and published in the astronomical press.