The Occultation of a 12.7 Star for 0.5s by Asteroid 2002 SV15

Sun eve March 15, 2026 at 11:15:27pm

OWc page

This has a good RUWE and rank and should be do-able given good dark skies and condition. 2x or 4x should work.

Alt=42, Az=262 in Orion

Results:

Richard Nolthenius

I ended up, after scrambling to Blue Ball Park in Soquel, but got kicked out by the security guard locking gates, at a residential street across from Soquel High. Had some trouble with growing clouds. Got a recording at 16x. Don't know what I got yet.

Kirk Bender

I don't see an event for 2002 SV15, 8x Mar. 15 at the BD eco reserve. There were variable thin high clouds, as shown in the tracking star curves. The target was faint and very near another star, I used a small size 11 aperture. I watched PyMovie and the mask didn't jump to the near star. I was nearer to the path boundary than the centerline. The target was barely above background and noisy, maybe an event was undetectable at 8x. PyOTE detectability test reported an event as short as 0.810s would likely be detectable, predicted max was 0.49s.