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Pre-pointing the telescope for Pluto occultation on the 19th of July 2016

Pre-pointing the telescope

For all areas of Europe, the time between a sufficient dark sky and the occultation event is very short. Even more, the event is not very high in the sky. This makes finding the star field very difficult. Therefore we suggest to use pre-point stars.

In this case we are very lucky. A relatively bright star with magnitude 3.5 will have a time offset of only 9min 37sec. The star has the position

RA 18h 57.7' and Dec -21° 6' (J2000)

and the designation SGR Xi2-37 as well as HIP 93085

And the distance is only -3.9 arcmin. This means, if you have centered the prepoint star in your telescope, you stop the drive and wait 9min 37sec. Then you switch on the drive and the field with Pluto and the target star should be around 3.9 armin SOUTH of the point, where the telescope points to. This should be very easy to maintain.

Other stars are also possible, as can be seen from the following list. This list has been generated using OCCULT software V 4.2.0.11. The first object is the target star itself. 



       Occultation of 4UC 345-180315 by 
         P9M00 Pluto on 2016 Jul 19 
              Pre-point stars

         Prediction of 2016 Jun 29.0

  Time                J2000         Dec
 Offset    Star    RA       Dec   Offset   SAO
 h  m  s    mag   h   m     o  '  ArcMin

 0  0  0   14.5  19  7.4  -21 10   star       
 0  9 37    3.5  18 57.7  -21  6   -3.9   187504 >> HIP 93085
 0 22  0    6.4  18 45.3  -21  0   -9.9   187234
 0 28 24    5.9  18 38.9  -21  3   -6.7   187086
 0 53 27    3.8  18 13.8  -21  4   -5.7   186497

 1 46  4    4.4  17 21.0  -21  7   -1.2         

 2 52 25    6.4  16 14.5  -21  6    0.0   184253

 3  0  5    3.9  16  6.8  -20 40  -26.1   184123
 3  9 11    5.8  15 57.7  -20 59   -7.1   183972
 3 28 33    5.8  15 38.3  -21  1   -4.7   183646

 4 20 31    6.4  14 46.2  -21 11    5.8   182858