The
International Occultation Timing Association's 41st Annual
Meeting
July 15 -16, 2023
via Zoom online
by Richard Nugent, IOTA Executive Secretary
You Tube videos of the presentations are located here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPYvLiLF-6zsVP4-tFsbsalAQWEaxYW-a
The meeting presentations, Zoom link agenda and schedule for this year are located here:
https://occultations.org/community/meetingsconferences/na/2023-iota/
Special thanks to Ted Blank for the technical operation of the Zoom meeting.
.............Russ McCormick .........................Tony George
Attendees: The meeting started with a total of 48 participants, rose to 62 and this number fluctuated throughout the sessions.
July
15, 2023 20:00 UT – Meeting start
Vice President Dr. Roger Venable opened and welcomed everyone to the meeting.
Treasurer Dr. Joan Dunham presented IOTA’s
financials and membership status. A summary of the year’s
income/expense report (July, 2022 to June, 2023):
Income:
Expenses:
..........................Net Income: $89.793.42
Store Inventory
RunCam Night Eagle 3 - 23 units ready for sale
RunCam Night Eagle 2 - 0 units
Video Time Inserters - 14 ready for sale, 8 in preparation
Total cost of Inventory - $5,927.00
Special Purpose Funds:
*W. J. Merline Award for Discovery of an Asteroid Moon by Occultation (MADAMO)
Non-cash donations were made by many, spending many hours on observing activities, data analysis, software development and maintenance, IOTA administration, outreach activities, web site maintenance, and more. To everyone who donated to IOTA this past year: THANK YOU! Your support is key to IOTA’s success!
IOTA Membership and Subscription:
Voting Membership -128
Library membership - 1
President Steve Preston discussed IOTA's investment fund in particular the Derald Nye bequest. Part of the funds will be invested in a conservative long term fund portfolio. IOTA plans on using 2% of the funds for ordinary expenses. A Grant Committee to award grants for special IOTA projects is in the process of formation. Details of how the funds will be used is still being worked on. Paul Maley asked why IOTA hasn't received the remainder of the Nye Estate. Steve mentioned the Trustees of the estate and some legal formalities have delayed the distribution.
Executive Secretary Richard Nugent presented IOTA’s Homer F. Daboll award. The Homer F. DaBoll Award is givento recognize significant contributions to the field of occultation science and to the work of IOTA. This year's recipients are Russ McComick and Tony George.
Russ is honored for his development and maintenance of IOTA Video Capture and its companion, IOTA Video Playback. His attention to what observers wanted led to the development of a software package that can be programmed to capture data automatically from remote, unattended, small Windows computers and tablets. This program is a mainstay of many observers’ data capture kit, a dependable and easy-to-use facility. Also, it should be noted that he provides a detailed user guide, a great benefit for those first using these programs. Russ sent the following message upon her notification of the award:
Richard,
Thanks for notifying me about the Homer Daboll Award. I am honored and hope to perpetuate IOTA members trust in the IOTA Capture and Playback software as we press on into the future. I still have multiple years of work to do as I begin to support digital cameras along with the current support for analog cameras.I started programming the two applications seven years ago based on a user error on my part while trying to use the currently available recording software. I had just purchased an analog camera used by IOTA members and found that it did not work on my laptop computer. So ultimately I decided to write a program to see if I could make it work, and that was the start of my two applications.
The best part of writing the applications is that it has permitted me to interface with many of the IOTA members, both for beta testing the software and after the official release for reporting issues. The membership has kept me intellectually stimulated, which is important to me because I have long since been retired from programming for a company.
Regards,
Russ McCormick
Tony George has not only been an outstanding observer but assisted in the development of Occular, the first publishable occultation analysis software. He is a collaborator with Bob Anderson in the design and refinement of PyOTE and PyMovie. He has reviewed many, many observations made by others regarding the findings and significance of their observations. He has been faithfully available to help anyone who asked for his opinion or advice about an observation. He has for many years been the go-to guy for troublesome videos and light curves both from newbies and experienced observers. Both John Moore (and Brad Timerson before that) and Eric Frappa make frequent use of Tony's expertise and willingness to take the time to explain and many cases actually do the data reduction and help them sort questionable observations. There are a number of cases where he was able to find a positive from an apparently hopeless observation. Tony worked with the manufacturer of the RunCam video camera and was responsible for developing the Astro version of the camera. There are a lot of chords that have Tony's initials on them as he has been an active observer for many years. On March 27, 2022, Tony made an observation of a moon of 15094 Polymele confirmed on 2023 Feb 4 by a campagn in Kansas. The LUCY mission is scheduled to arrive at Polymele in September 2027. Tony’s work has been universally appreciated among occultation observers.
Tony sent the following message upon notification of the award:
Richard,
Thank you for presenting me with the DaBoll Award for 2023.
Occultation astronomy is a field where amateur astronomers can make a significant contribution to science and astronomy. Over the last 30+ years I have enjoyed contributing my own personal occultation observations to IOTA. During that period, I also worked as a volunteer analyst and beta tester for many of the programs we use today. Best of all, I got to work with some amazing people, including the late Brad Timerson, Bob Anderson, Steve Preston, Dave Herald, Dave Gault, Hristo Pavlov, Ted Blank, David and Joan Dunham, Paul Maley, and many many others. I have learned a lot and had a lot of fun along the way.
Occultation astronomy has a place for everyone to contribute their skills, energy, and interest. I encourage all IOTA members, new and old, to contribute wherever you can and hope that you have as much fun as I have in the process.
Thank you again for awarding me with the DaBoll Award for 2023.
Tony George
For information on IOTA's awards, including previous
awardees, see the award webpage:
http://www.asteroidoccultations.com/observations/Awards/IOTAAwards.htm
Technical
sessions:
Norm Carlson presented a list of the "Best Observed North American Asteroidal Occultations." Norm is on IOTA's report team. He showed the sky plane plot of the observed chords for the 90 Antiope binary asteroid event on Aug 8, 2022. This Aug 2022 observation's chords were in excellent agreement with the shape models. Another 90 Antiope event occured on Nov 21, 2022. Despite some difficulty in interpreting the data from the occultation of 2 stars, the end result were chords in very good agreement with the shape models.
90 Antiope chords and shape model from the 2022 Aug 8 occultation
Norm mentioned other discoveries for 2022/2023:
276 Aldeheid 2022 Aug 31 - yielded a possible satellite observed by Kevin Green.
906 Repsolda 2023 Jan 25 - possible satellite discovery by Kirk Bender. Dr. Rick Nolthenius also observed this event.
175 Andromache 2022 Dec 21 - likely double star discovery.
2102 Tantalus 2023 May 7 - a small 1.7km asteroid which might be a potential NEO.
Several occultations by 65083 Dimorphos and its satellite Didymos were observed in 2022 and early 2023. This was NASA's DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission by slaming a spacecraft into Didymos to see if its orbit could be changed. The successful occultation observations allowed highly accurate asteroid positions providing accurate orbit updates confirming the success of the NASA DART mission.
Norm acknowledged the North American Report Team: Jerry Bardecker, Bob Dunford, Ernie Iverson, Steve Messner, John Moore - Coordinator Emeritus, Tony George - Difficult Observations Analyst (aka "The Shadow Whisperer"), Johnny Barton & Dave Eisfeldt- Tangra Support, Dave Gault and Dave Herald.
Dave Herald presented "Best Observed non-North Anmerican Asteroidal Occultations from 2022." A record 1488 events were observed worldwide in 2022. While the number of observed events have been growing, the number of unusable events has been dropping rapidly. Dave showed statistical results of observations of 2020 compared to 2022 based on region and asteroid diameter. More statistical results were shown covering years 2000 to 2022 of the # of observers per event and # of individual observers. Occultations also are discovering double stars. With several stations observing these occultations, the uncertainty in separation can approach <0.001". In 2022, 15 double stars were discovered by IOTA observers. Discoveries are usually published in the Journal of Double Star Observations (JDSO.org) and will be added to the Washington Double Star Catalog (WDS) maintained at the USNO. Dave showed several individual asteroid profiles from well observed events. Occultation derived sizes were compared to those estimated by the satellites: NeoWise, AcuA and IRAS. Occultation derived sizes matched very well with the satellite data within the uncertainties. He showed a few asteroid events in which a single chord was obviously off compared to those made by other observers. Dave postulated the source of these mismatched chords was due to timing errors.
Steve Preston presented "Best/Brightest Asteroidal Events of the Coming Year 2024." In earlier years before Gaia, there weren't that many bright star occultation events whose path could be predicted accurately. Now with much improved predictions, there are so many bright star easy to observe events. Thus it's been difficult to choose the "best" events. Steve will have a webpage of these events posted soon. Some important NEA events for 2024:
Aug 13, 2024: Didymos - a cruicial event to refine it's orbit.
Nov 7, 2024: 3200 Phaethon, Australia
Dec 22, 2024: 3200 Phaethon, USA
Steve then did a quick run through of the best worldwide events over Europe, Australia, and Japan. Then he showed maps of the best 2024 events over North America.
Dr. David Dunham presented "NEA Observations:
Recent and Upcoming." The motivation for studying NEA's
is for planetary defense. Unlike the dinosaurs who had no way of
knowing their species would end from the Chicalub event some 65
million years ago, humans now rule and can predict when an NEA is
approaching the Earth. The 1st observed NEO occultation was Jan
24, 1975 of kappa Gem by the asteroid Eros. 3200 Phaethon was the
1st asteorid discoverd by the IRAS spacecraft. The 1st
occultation of the 6km size Phaethon was made July 29, 2019 over
central California. The chord profile of this 2019 event can be
found one-half way down the page: http://www.poyntsource.com/Richard/IOTAMeeting2019.htm
In 2021, occultation (plus radar) observations helped end the risk of the asteroid Apophis striking the Earth in 2029. Other NEO occultations mentioned were of Didymos/Dimorphos in 2022/2023, 2001 CC21, and an NEA flyby target of Hayabusa2. David then showed 2 maps of NEA events in North America during 2023 to mag 12.0 and mag 13.0 for Phaethon. He showed a list of 20 km sized objects that could be hazardous events during the next 1000 years. David then showed a map of the 2024 Didymos and Pahethon events over North America. For more information see https://occultations.org/publications/rasc/2023/ACM2023.htm for this presentation.
David then presented a talk about
"Trojans, Centaurs, KBO's and Main Belt Asteroids with
Moons." He showed maps of occultations of distant
objects for the rest of 2023 in N. America: Titania, Chaos, 2013
LU28, Quaoar, Bienor, Weywot and Titan. Then he showed events of
Trojan asteroids (at Jupiter's L4 & L5 Lagrangian points) for
the rest of 2023 in N. America. SwRI has a page https://lucy.swri.edu/mission/Targets.html showing Lucy mission targets and their paths over N.
America for 2023. David showed more predictions by special
main-belt asteroids for 2024 that will appear in the 2024 RASC
Handbook. After showing several more important occultation
events, he closed with a map of the best Lunar Grazing events for
2023 over N. America.
David next presented a talk about the upcoming 319 Leona Asteroid Occultation of Betelgeuse on December 12, 2023." Betelguese is the brightest star to date with the most liklihood of having its occultation visible. The path of this event is visible from south Florida across the Atlantic ocean through southern Europe. Asteroid Leona and Betelguese are nearly the same size so the star will fade and have a possible 50%-80% drop in brightness. This can be an unprecedented opportunity to have an "annular type" eclipse of Betelguese. Leona's long rotation period of 430 ± 2 hours complicates determining its size and shape.
David showed detailed maps of the path over south Florida and Europe. On Aug 27, 2023 there is an occultation of Lenoa over N. America. Observers are encouraged to try this one to help pin down Leona's size. This Betelguese event might be recorded by DSLRs using a smart phone timing app. David encouraged this event to be observed by astronomy clubs, college and advanced high school students near the path to introduce them to occultation observations and their scientific value.
319 Leona occultation path: Florida, Spain and southern Europe, 2023 Dec 12
Dr. Mike Skrutskie persented his talk on "Automated Observations from a Fixed Site Using SharpCap Sequencing." SharpCap is a "free" Windows application that can be adapted with integrating cameras. Mike mentioned that one must pay a $15 fee to unlock the Pro features to be used. The basic recipe for starting to record an event is to 1) turn on the telescope, 2) slew to the target, 3) Use SharpCap to platesolve and sync, 4) slew to target and platesolve again to get pointing to approx 1-arc minute precision, 5) wait until event time, 6) set integration time and 7) capture required no. of frames. With this method, Mike can do multiple events in a single night from a single location. Mike listed the required hardware/software components to make the system work which includes a go-to mount, ASCOM focuser, platesolving software (plus their databases) and a SharpCap compatible camera and a data acquisition computer with remote desktop software. Mike than showed a sample script and described how the sequence works step by step.
Mike does searches using Occult4 typically 3 days in advance for events he'll try. For a typical night he might have a list of 30 events to choose from. So how does the system fare? From his patio, Mike has been averaging 1 positive occultation event/week or about 50/year, this with an 8" telescope. He recently acquired a 16" telescope and may be able to double these numbers. Not too shabby!
Vice President Dr. Roger Venable presented the upcoming "704 Interamnia Campaign on September 13, 2023." The purpose of this campaign is not just to obtain shape and size data about Interamnia. Roger showed a map of the path of the 340 km sized Interamnia. The path goes from southern California, central Arizona all the way to the northeast USA. The conditions are favorable for this event: The target star is bright at mag 9.0, pathwidth 340 km ± 37 km, magnituide drop =2.7, maximum duration of 17.3 seconds, high altitude of the target star and the Moon just 3% illuminated. The rationale for the campaign is that such an easy bright star event will enable observers to concentrate on the mobile aspects of observing rather than on the difficulties of the event. It is hoped that observers who have never made a mobile observation will see this as an opportunity to try their first mobile observation. He encouraged observers to save the date. The path is wide enough so chord duplication is not a problem, nevertheless contact Roger is you plan to observe so he can assign you one or more chords.
Dave Herald showed how using Google Earth in conjunction with Occult4 can create fence lines at any separation one chooses. This can greatly simplify the spacing and assignment of observers both at fixed and mobile sites.
The Meeting formerly ended at 2:05 UT July16th.
-----------July 16 - 20:00 UT - Meeting begins. Online attendees reached 65 persons and this number fluctuated throughout the meeting
Dr. Mitsuru Soma, Vice President for Grazing Occultation Services started the meeting with a talk about "Lunar Grazing Observations." Dr. Soma talked about important results from analyses of observations of lunar grazing occultations from 2021-2023. The ZC 2061 graze on 2022 January 25 was observed by M. Ishida and H. Yamamura in Japan. Their observations clearly showed that the star is double, and the relative positions of the star's components were obtained from their observations. Actually the star's duplicity had already been detected in 2014 by D. Gault and D. Herald in Australia through their lunar occultation observations. It turned out that the newly obtained results about the relative positions (separation and position angle) are significantly different from those obtained in 2014. The ZC 1049 graze on 2021 September 2 was observed by J. Bourgeois and B. Goffin in Belgium. They found that the star is a new double star. The ZC 709 graze on 2021 September 27 was observed at 2 stations by B. Gaehrken in Italy and at 1 station by M. Turchenko in Russia. B. Gaehrken also detected the star's companion at his 1 station. For all of the 3 events mentioned here it was found that significant corrections to the positions of the stars in Gaia DR3 were also required. This demonstrates the importance of observations of lunar grazing occultations not only to find double stars but also to analyze positinal errors.
Dr. Fumi Yoshida discussed the new occultation observing organization, the International Occultation Timing Association East Asia (IOTA/EA), in East Asia. This organization will be officially launched with its inaugural meeting on August 27, 2023. IOTA/EA is a joint organization of professional and amateur astronomers. It consists of core members, regional directors, and a large number of members who are officially registered after the inaugural meeting. The organization of IOTA/EA was planned mainly by Japanese members. The reason was a request from the DESTINY+ mission ( (3200) Phaethon's flyby mission) for Japanese occultation observers to perform an occultation observation of Phaethon. The DESTINY+ mission needed to know the exact size of Phaethon and create a 3D shape model in order to carry out the mission. A joint professional/amateur team was organized to observe the occultation of Phaethon. The unity of professionals and amateurs at this time was the motivation for the creation of IOTA/EA.
Some examples of
international occultation observations in which Japanese
observers have participated are listed below:
https://academic.oup.com/pasj/article/75/1/153/6947807
Joint professional and amateur observing teams have been formed several times and the following observations have been made : Stellar occultation of Triton on 6 October 2022, Stellar occultation of Phaethon on 21 October 2022 (for DESTINY+), Stellar occultation of Didymos in Oct. - Nov. 2022 (for DART) and for the stellar occultation of 2001CC21 in Jan. - Mar. (for Hayabusa2#). Now Japanese observers can observe occultation events with durations as short as 0.1 seconds, the brightness of the occulted object < 11-12 mag. There are many amateur astronomers in Japan who have made occultation observations. Since 1995, they have been accumulating their expertise in occultation observation by exchanging information through a mailing list called JOIN. In JOIN, occultation observers collect observation results and data analysis experience, and also study to improve observation and analysis techniques.
While JOIN is a group of individual observers, IOTA/EA will disseminate and share the knowledge and experience accumulated by JOIN and expand the number of occultation observers. IOTA/EA also cooperates with neighboring countries and aims to become an organization that can collaborate on planetary exploration missions and scientific observations by researchers. IOTA/EA will do the following: Provide predictions of occultation events observable in East Asia, submit observation reports to the IOTA, then IAU and create data archives (light curves, AVI files, etc.). IOTA/EA will initiate observing campaigns for important objects and conducting workshops to train beginners in observation/analysis methods and tools, distribute observing manuals and publish its activities on the web, so that the activities of IOTA/EA are known to occultation observers around the world.
IOTA/EA will carry out occultation observations associated with planetary exploration missions and scientific observations proposed by researchers. In 2023, IOTA/EA's observing plan includes 2005UD, a candidate for the second DESTINY+ flyby target, and outer objects such as TNO and Trojans, with the aim of discovering rings and satellites. Since there is no common language in East Asia, it is difficult to share information. Therefore, we have appointed Regional Directors in major countries/regions. The role of the Regional Directors is to communicate the information provided by IOTA/EA (written in English) to observers in the countries/regions, in a language that local observers can understand, and to help communicate reports and questions from observers to IOTA/EA. IOTA/EA will help them to communicate their reports and questions to IOTA/EA. In other words, the Regional Directors act as a liaison between IOTA/EA and the observers in each region where the Director resides. IOTA/EA currently has regional directors in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and hoping to extend this observation network to our friends in the Southeast/Central Asia regions in the near future.
With the establishment of IOTA/EA, they would like to contribute to occultation observations in the East Asia region in close cooperation with IOTA. The IOTA/EA webpage is: https://www.perc.it-chiba.ac.jp/iota-ea/wp/
Dr. Joan Dunham presented this year's IOTA outreach at the annual North East Astronomy Forum (NEAF) and other meetings. One problem is how can IOTA find new observers and how effective is our methods? Roxanne Kamin gave the IOTA presentation on chasing tiny shadows. IOTA's NEAF booth received lots of visitors. Joan mentioned for potential new IOTA members that in-person meetings can be expensive, meeting info may not be disseminated and online meetings are time consuming.
The Asteroid, Comets and Meteors conference was in Arizona 2023 Jun 18-23. There were multiple presentations including recognizing occultation work by observers. An advantage of an in-person meeting is the face to face interactions with scientists from around the world. This conference does not make the presentations available nor are there conference proceedings published. The Gaia team highlighted the Arecibo satellite discovery by the two occultations in May and June 2021.
At the conference, SwRI gave talks about the Lucy mission targets. One target is the asteroid Polymele in which Tony George's observation in March 2022 and light curve indicated a possible moon. Marc Buie mentioned that he has a Sky and Telescope article for the September 2023 issue on occultations and the Lucy mission targets. Joel Castro had a poster presentation on "The Mexican Network for Stellar Occultations: A Professional and Citizen Science Collaboration." And the Minor Planet Center (MPC) announced major upgrades to manage their data volumes. Joan also mentioned they have started a monthly newsletter to communicate with their users as well as the general public.
Dr. Kevin Green spoke about a "Possible Adelheid moonlet and Other Upcoming Events." The 276 Adelheid occultation of 31 Aug 2022 yielded a possible moon, this observation Kevin made. He showed trhe orientation of Adelheld at the time of the occultation. He showed an animation using the shape model of Adelheid's 6.4 hour light curve - it was fairly consistant with very little light variation. The estimates of the moon's probablity of detection during an occultation was 400 to 1 - so he was quite lucky. With an estimated mass he postulated a 1.8 day orbital period for such a moon around Adelheid. With 15 previous occultations, no light curves showed evidence of a satellite. The shape models matched quite well with the light curves with only minor disagreement. Kevin showed upcoming maps of future Adelheid events in USA including 23 Sep 2023 (near where he lives) along with an estimated orientations of Adelheid's rotational axis. He is currently trying to recruit observers for this Sep 2023 event. Kevin's next talk was about Stellar Multiplicity & Asteroidal Occultations. The basic question is how many stars are mutiple systems? Kevin showed a graph showing it depends on the star size. It is estimated that half of all stars belong to multiple systems. A possible double star occultation will occur 2023 Sep 13 by the asteroid 256 Walpurga.
Dave Herald talked about "What Happens to an Observation after Submission." Observations are first sent to the Regonal Coordinators (Australasia, Europe, USA, Japan, South America, Unistellar) They consolidate all the observations, identify and try to resolve problems, fit an ellipse to observations and shape models, initiate double star analysis, asteroid satellite analysis and coordinate with other coordinators when the event crosses other regions. Following analysis, the events are sent to the Global coordinator (Dave) in batches of 10 events. Dave then begins a quality assurance process: he closely reviews the analysis of shape model fitting, double star solutions, possible satellite discoveries. If an observation appears to have a hidden problem, further analysis and questions arise. The Unistellar telescopes observers are now entering the field and these folks are now submiting observations. Dave then showed a table from Occult showing asteroid diameters with uncertanties from shape model fitting (DAMIT, ISAM).
For determining size and shape of asteroids, we need multiple chords. Currenty most observations are single person/single chord observations. Shape model investigators need occultation chords to improve models. While shape models can give shape, occultation observations give size. More studies are used in combination with mass measurements from orbital pertubations to derive densities of some asteroids.
After submitting observations to the MPC for years, in 2019 - 2023 they were put on hold. A serious review began detailing an error model with assistance from JPL Horizons. MPC has been developing a new reporting system using the standard Astrometry Data Exchange Standard (ADES). A new MPC observatory code has been assigned for occultations - 275. For some special events, there is direct reporting to JPL Horizons with rapid orbit updates as needed especially for predictions for future spacecraft encounters. Dave showed an ADES sample page for submission of data. An example of the high credibility of our observations came with 14 (fourteen) Didymos occultations thru 2023 Jan 22 as compared to the DART OpNavs and radar measurements.
For double star discoveries, they will only be added to the WDS is by publication in a recognized journal such as the Journal of Double Star Observations (JDSO.org). Since the regional coordinators don't have the time to write the papers, Dave suggested a standard pro-forma (template) paper which would enable observers to easily prepare a paper for submission to JDSO. Dave next discussed archiving with NASA's PDS system. The current archive has been paused for several years. The next archive is ready to be submitted. There is a tremendous amount data for each event - 260 columns of data, with each observer for each event has 42 columns of data. Currently there is more than 36,000 rows of data and each field needs a description of the data ! Dave asked for assistance for the descriptions as this is a huge task!
Mark Simpson discusssed the Raspberry Pi timing device: ASTRID - NextGen OTE: It represents the development of a standardized digital camera, timing and mount control system based on a Raspberry Pi. The tightly integrated system includes a Mono Global Shutter Camera, highly precise frame timing, timing audit trail, GPS timing board, 12 Volt Power complete with Plate Solving, Goto and Polar Align. ASTRID also doubles up as an astrophotography camera when not being used for occultations. Mark demonstrated an occultation acquisition including plate solving, focusing, and time stamping. He also detailed the design and features of ASTRID.
Bob Anderson spoke about "Methods for Improving Light Curve Extractions from Videos." He elaborated on the tried-and-true technique for extracting improved light curves from occultation videos – “measure many ways; pick the best”. Three extraction methods were described and illustrated using real-life case studies. The controversial problem of determining the “best” was discussed at length. During that discussion it was proposed that edge-time uncertainty (time error bar value) should be the primary metric in selecting the light curve for reporting.
Bob continued with his talk about "A Set of Calibrated Video Files for Evaluating Light Curve Extractions." In this pesentation, Bob announced the public availability of a suite of test videos useful for testing light curve extraction programs. The videos are calibrated in the sense that the underlying light curves are known and so can be compared with the ‘answer’ produced by programs like PyMovie. The videos are synthetic because they are the result of simulations of the major factors present in real-life occultation recordings: shot noise; scintillation noise; high and low altitude turbulences; telescope/optics; camera characteristics. The talk included a slide for each of the underlying light curves available in the test suite and concluded with a link to the files: PyMovie « IOTA (occultations.org)
Kai Getrost next discussed a Weather Forecaster for Occultations: "OccuWeather - A Tool to Aid Occultation Weather Planning." A typical occultation plan includes looking at several online weather cloud forecast maps. The problem is these weather maps don't have the occultation paths - one must mentally recall the occultation path while looking at the cloud forecast map. Kai created a website (currently under construction) for cloud forecasting: occuweather.info Kai integrated the Google KML files to overlay the occultation paths on the cloud maps. Both graphical forecasts and satellite imagery are supported. The website currently has several time-lapse cloud cover maps with the occultation paths overlaid on them for North America, Australia/NZ and Europe.
Right now, Kai has to enter each occultation event map manually which only takes a minute. Kai's future work will include 1) automatically set the forecast to the predicted event time - The goal here is not having to "do the math" every time one is checking the weather, e.g. not having to select "+72 hours" when checking 3 days before the event, then "+48 hours" when checking 2 days before, etc., 2) clicking on the map to get lat/long at any point, 3) mobile/ tablet support, 4) and possibly integrate with Occultwatcher Cloud.
The meeting ended at 1:50 UT July 17th.
Summaries of all IOTA's annual meetings are at: http://www.poyntsource.com/Richard/IOTA_Annual_Meetings.htm
The International Occultation Timing Association is the
primary scientific organization that predicts, observes and
analyses lunar and asteroid occultations and solar eclipses.
IOTA astronomers have organized teams of observers worldwide to
travel to observe grazing occultations of stars by the
Moon, eclipses of stars by asteroids and solar eclipses since
1962.