The Occultation of a W=8.6 Star by GaiaMoons Asteroid (3596) Meriones

Thur morning Jan 29, 2026 at 12:39:58am

OWc page

 

Very bright star, GaiaMoons asteroid so likely does have a moon waiting for discovery. But the RUWE is very high at 3.95 (or 6.55 in OWc). That means despite this being a low-numbered asteroid and a good orbit, the path is rather uncertain. The value is in a moonlet discovery, but the orbit will likely not be improved since RUWE is so high. Use 1x and tone down the sensitivity. Do over-do it, since we do want the point-to-point scatter to be narrow enough that even a single point drop to zero will stand out as significance. But the moonlet responsible for periodic sky motion is likely large enough to give an occultation lasting a second or more.

Alt=14, Az=119 in Virgo. Will require a good horizon.

     

 

Results:

Richard Nolthenius

14 degrees was too low to get from Rincon, so I drove to the east side parking area next to Holy Cross Church. Had a hard time finding a place to set up still, My first choice was a bad guess where the target would be - straight into an overhead light after 2-star align and GoTo. I still had 14 minutes, which was enough to port the scope to another choice where I could see Spica, and hopefully the target would just barely clear a tree. It did, and the target got ID'd quickly. I recorded from 12:37:30am to 12:42:30am. Looked like a miss, at 2x setting.