ESOP XXXII held in Barcelona, Spain

The 32^nd meeting of the ESOP series is held from 23^rd to 25^th or August 2013

Take part!

New: Complete Information

Occultation by Uranus on 23rd of May 2013

The planet Uranus and its ring system will occult the star 3UCAC 188002199 on the 23^rd of May 2013 around 2h UTC. The occultation zone is limited to the eastern mediterranean as well as eastern Africa. Read more!

Minor Planet Occultations of Bright Stars

Occultations by stars brighter than about 9th mag will be presented in this blog.http://call4obs.iota-es.de

Grazing Occultations of Stars by the Moon

A field of professional astronomy between science and beauty

Among all occultation phenomena in the sky grazing occultations of stars by the moon have a very unique character. The observation of these spectacular events ... read the overview in full length!

The Journal for Occultation Astronomy is now free for all, except for the latest two issues. These are for members only!

In order to improve the discussion about Occultation Astronomy, the JOA can now freely be downloaded. Only the last two issues are for members of IOTA and IOTA-ES only!

If you are not a member, please have a look here. Otherwise, login using the "members login".

Good news from Hiroshima!

The last campaign fo the occultation by (20000) Varuna was successful observed in Japan!

As Bruno Sicardy reports from Paris:
A great positive detection of the Varuna occn of Jan 8 is reported by the Hiroshima observatory, with a 12.6 s duration event
D 20h 24m 42.5s ±1.5s and R 20h 24m 55.1s ±1.0s .
The Kagoshima station, about 310 km south of Hiroshima, report a negative observation. I am happy also to see that the astrometric updates were able to pin down the predictions to less than 25 mas.

Here more details of the pre-occultation situation:

(20000) Varuna May Occult 16mag Star
3UCAC 233-089504 possibly for Central Europe! New Astrometry! 8th of January 2013, around 20h 31 min UTC Final Prediction update (7th of January) read more...

Last years greatest events, what you may have missed:

Predictions 2012 for TNOs, dwarf planets etc.

Special events:

Quaoar events from Europe

There are 3 good events for (50000) Quaoar observable from Europe or not too far away. These are:

17th February 2012	R-mag 15m1
17th April 2012	R-mag 11m2
27th May 2012	R.mag 17m5

All events are easy to observe, but they are not too high in the sky.

NIX event from Europe

There is an occultation by Pluto's satellite NIX on
21^st of Mar 2012 from northern Europe, very low in the sky. Worth to try....

Double occultation events for Pluto and Charon

These are occultation, where the same star is occulted by Pluto and Charon in the same night. They are very important for the relative astrometry of Pluto and Charon. That puts them on the very preferred list!

For Occultwatcher Users:

European Feed for Lunar Occultations of Double Stars

There is a "Lunar Occultations Add-in" for "OccultWatcher" ready for download to get in OW interesting lunar occultations of double and suspected double stars. Read more..

.Asteroid TU24 recorded from Munich around 1h 10min UT on 30th Jan 2008. Fast motion (5x). Near miss of 11m9 star  TYC 4140-520

EU-Project EUROPLANET creates a database for professional and amateur observatories!. Have a look to their questionaire! Read more...