THE UPDATED PATH

If anyone could possibly drag themselves away from watching the Leonids, you could try this minor planet occultation !! This updated path lies around 0.5" to the east of that given by Goffin and around three minutes later. The path crosses Papua New Guinea between Madang and Lae (17:29 UT). Across the Gulf of Carpentaria, the path makes landfall near Borroloola (17:32 UT), passes close to Tennant Creek on the way to the far southern coast of Western Australia around Hopetoun (17:37 UT).

Calculation Source

This prediction update has been computed by Steve Preston, Medina (Seattle), Washington, USA based on astrometry from Ron Stone of the US Naval Observatory - Flagstaff Station and Raoul Behrend of the Geneva Observatory supplemented with data from the AstDys database. The Tycho 2 position of the target star has been used.

• Date and approx. UT time of event: 2001 November 18 - 17:30 UT
• Magnitude of target star: 8.8
• Magnitude drop [mag]: 5.2
• Estimated maximum duration [s]: 6.0
• Angular distance to moon, phase of moon [deg,%]: 128, 13%
• Goffin's original chart reference: A01_1144

• Approximate width [km]: 49
• Uncertainty [path widths]: +/- 1.28 (1 sigma)
• Remarks: Uncertainities are given on the basis of the nominal star position errors and the expected asteroid positional accuracy.
• Circles along the path are OCCULT calculated exact centerline points !!!!

• Name: TYC 6480-01615-1 = PPM 248913 = SAO 170443
• Constellation: Lepus
• J2000 position [h,m,s; ^o,',"]: 5h 27m 29.5751s; -25^o 07' 47.213"
• Position source: Tycho 2
• Estimated accuracy ["]: 0.025" (0.019", 0.017")
• V mag [mag]: 8.81
• B-V [mag]: +1.19
• Remarks:
• The target star is in southern Lepus. It lies 1 degree southeast of the globular cluster Messier 79 (magnitude = 7.8).

• Number, name: (1263) Varsavia
• Approx. diameter [km]: 50.7
• Source of used astrometry: USNO - Flagstaff Station (Ron Stone), Geneva Obs (Raoul Behrend), AstDys
• Number of used observations: 269
• Number of rejected observations: 22
• Time covered by the observations: 1933 03 23 - 2001 11 07
• Update computed by: Steve Preston, Medina, Washington, USA (Orbfit).

IMPORTANT NOTE!

Astrometric updates such as these should not be taken as definitive, but rather only as an indication of where the true track may lie relative to the original predicted track. Observers must bear in mind that later astrometry, in which the target star is measured in the same field as the asteroid, may still reveal substantial changes to the predicted track and time of the event. For this reason it is most important that observers far from the predicted track still monitor the event.