Results from the Nov 16/17 Discovery, and subsequent asteroid photometry
This asteroid was discovered to be a binary asteroid by me on Nov 16, 2025, and confirmed by Jean-Francois Gout and Mattheiu Conjat during the following week, of 2024. We don't have an orbit as of Feb '25, but the orbital period is 23.17 hours, The asteroids are only 1.9 km in diameter and gravity is weak, my calculation shows the minimu semi-major axis is 17 km, so there's certainly a chance for missing both of them. Duration this time is only 0.3 seconds for a prior assumed single object, and not 0.52 s as it was last November. So each component will be even less than 0.3s. Will required good conditions to get good data.
Alt=32, Az=274 in Taurus, one quarter of the way from the Plieades to the Hyades.
There will be no moon, unlike the bright 97% moon only 9 degrees away from the brighter Nov 16/17, 2024 discovery event. It will help if you can get out of the city lights, therefore (last time it hardly mattered). Martschmidt is now past retrograde and moving eastward and more rapidly than in Nov '24. Each component will result in an occultation lasting at most about 0.22 seconds. This means we should use the shortest integration possible to get decent data. The stars near the last November occultation, when put on the Watec instrumental magnitude system ("W" magnitudes, in my pages), are within 0.1 magnitude of being "r" magnitudes as shown in C2A's magnitude list for each UCAC4 star. The "r" magnitude for this star UCAC4 560-008417 is 12.9. This will require 4x for our 8SE telescopes with f/3.3 reducer.
I hope it will be clear and fog-free at Cabrillo College Observatory, where I will try to get the Watec to come to focus on the 12" SCT on a convenient day before the event. This will allow a full 1.1 magnitude deeper photometry.
For others seeing my pages for the first time: I make my finder charts for my "team Santa Cruz" who have 8SE Celestron scopes with f/3.3 focal reducers and Watec 910hx cameras. The circular eyepiece chart matches the view for a 32mm 2" Orion Q70 eyepiece on the 8SE telescope, and the square chart for the view of the Watec chip when the f/3.3 focal reducer is in place. These are alt/az scopes, so the top is "up" towards the zenith. The circular eyepiece chart further assumes we're using the 2" diagonal for mounting the Q70 eyepiece. The square chart assumes the Watec camera is mounted in back of the f/3.3 reducer "straight through" (requires the target's altitude be less than 74 degrees) and that the brass BNC video-out connector on the Watec is rotated to be "up". The Q70 eyepiece has a field of view of about 1 degree.
For finding the object, the coordinates needed by the 8SE telescope after a 2-star align, is the RA/Dec "of date", not J2000. And that's the coordinates you'll see on my charts.
Feb 18: My student Bernard has photometric evidence (not perfectly solid as only an approximate magnitude calibrate was done) of an eclipse consistent with the past eclipses, as late as Jan 23. Extending forward, it suggests the components will be about 2 hrs from being in alignment again. This would be favorable for getting both components by staying fairly tight to the predicted path (which still assumes a single object).
|
|
|
|
as the event time approaches. Each map labelled with the date/time Weather.us was asked for the cloud cover at event time of 10pm Feb 23 local PST.
Feb 16 - ask time = noon PST |
Better; ECMWF model, and high clouds only (we can escape low clouds using mtns). Ask time was 1pm Feb 17 |
 |
The finger of clouds are low fog |
