The Occultation of a 12.3 Star by Asteroid 2000 SL45

Fri eve June 20, 2025 at 10:00:15pm

OWc page

 

This occultation misses Santa Cruz, passing through Scotts Valley and Aptos. The star is reasonably bright, but the duration is only 0.3s max, so you'll want to use 2x if possible, and 4x only if necessary.

Alt=22, Az=141, in southern Ophiuchuss, 12 degrees due left of Antares

   

 

Results

Richard Nolthenius

I set up at Polo Ranch Rd in Scotts Valley, at the parking spot near the big open field, next to the Hwy 17 freeway. The trees provide a bit of wind block, but not much and not enough. I adopted my "Batman" pose as the wind came from the NW and the target was in the south. I removed the dew shield too. I could not see the target on the monitor at 2x so I went to 4x for the recording.  I also reduced Gamma to 0.80 and that helped make the target star more visible. I disconnected the monitor. Don't know if I had an event or not, till I reduce the data. The data is on the camcorder; this is before I began using the Lenovo for recording.

My video is poorly focused. The event was difficult, and noisy, and the duration was max 0.3s. The data is not good enough to make a judgement. This one is a "purple heart" - too tough.

         

 

Kirk Bender

No apparent event for 2000 SL45, June 20th, 2x at Glenwood open space parking area in Scotts Valley. There was some wind, but I put the tripod low and close to my car and shake was minimal except for one short section near the end of my recording. PyOTE detectability tool reports an event as short as 0.35s was likely detectable. Predicted max duration was 0.27s. Either a miss or undetectable.   Rank was not great, and predicted duration short, and I was not on the centerline, so a miss was not unlikely.