Pluto occults 14th mag star UCAC4 345-180315 for Europe
on the 19/20th of July 2016

and its "Pathfinder Occultation" on the 13/14th of July

Attention! A more precise prediction for the occultation on the 19/20th of July has been derived from a GAIA position of the target star and from observations of the Pathfinder Occultation on the 14th of July. Bruno Sicardy and his team sends the two following maps (15th of July):

This is the post occultation map derived
from the observed pathfinder occultation on the 14th

This is the new prediction for the occultation on the 19th
as derived from a pre-release of the target star position from GAIA catalogue
and from the observation of the pathfinder occultation (above)

!! The north-south error is < 200 km, the timing error < 5 sec.!!

For the new prediction, local circumstances can be got from the graphics below

General and older information

Keep in mind, that all prediction still have large errors, in the range of +/- 400km or more!!

The "pathfinder occultation" on the 13/14th of July The star is only 16m1, but with about 0.5sec integration time an observation is possible even with a 12 or 16 inch telescope. Click on the map, to have a larger view! The following maps give a more detailed view of the occultation track and the local circumstances. Red is the center line and blue is the southern limit of the occultation.The dotted lines in each color are the uncertainties for the central line and the southern limit. The shaded areas give the elevation of the sun below the horizon, from 0° to 5°, 5° to 10°, 10° to 15°, 15° to 20° and the darkest shading is more than 20° below. The iso-elevation lines of Pluto above the horizon at the time of the occultation are plotted in light blue. 13/14th of July Expected chords for the 13/14th of July occultation Expected light curve for the 14th of July occultation (simulation) Infos from Bruno Sicardy, Paris:     The plot below shows the expected shape and depth of the event as seen from Europe and Morocco. Uncertainties in timing should be about 1 minute. I chose an arbitrary time step of one second and added some arbitrary noise to the light curves. The Morocco curve is shifted vertically by +0.1 for better viewing.     The event in Europe lasts for more than one minute, so do not hesitate to increase your exposure time to get more SNR if needed. For instance, with 10 sec exp. time, you will have some 6 data points in the event, still useful to fit a model, and thus improve the astrometry. Note that in Morocco, the event is expected to be extremely shallow. However, even a southern drift of the shadow as small as 100 km (5 milli-arcsec in the sky plane) will be enough to create a detectable dip there. In other words, even if negative, Morocco may still constrains the astrometry. If you get a light-curve, could you send it to Erick Meza and Bruno Sicardy *asap* so that to derive the post-event astrometry?     In order to save time and avoid back and forth emails, could you specify the telescope diameter, camera, exposure time, your position and estimation of your timing accuracy? Ideally, you should provide an ascii file with two columns, - one with the UT mid-exposure time (in seconds after 00:00 UT, July 14) - and one with the target flux, normalized to unity outside the event This file will be used to feed our adjustement procedure. Other, equivalent ascii file(s) for nearby reference star(s) will be useful for monitoring and correcting sky transparency variations. Field of view with Pluto positons from DSS (14th) Finder Charts for the event on 13/14th of July Field size: 5 min 10 min 1 degree 5 degree 10 degree 20 degree 40 degree

This is the main occultation on the 19/20th of July The main occultation is with a 14th mag star, therefore the dip in the lightcurve should be around 50% for the V or R bands. Here the latest update of the prediction. Click on the map to have a large view: The following maps give a more detailed view of the occultation track and the local circumstances. Red is the center line and blue is the southern limit of the occultation.The dotted lines in each color are the uncertainties for the central line and the southern limit. The shaded areas give the elevation of the sun below the horizon, from 0° to 5°, 5° to 10°, 10° to 15°, 15° to 20° and the darkest shading is more than 20° below. The iso-elevation lines of Pluto above the horizon at the time of the occultation are plotted in light blue. 19/20th of July Expected chords for the 19/20th of July occultation The red dot marks the area of the Central Flash. Expected Chords for the occultation on the 19th of July for observatories in Marocco and south western Europe have been calculated by Bruno Sicardy. Keep in mind, that the north - south error of the prediction is still very large !!! The next graphic is an enlarged view of the expected region of the Central Flash. Field of view with Pluto positons from DSS2 red (19th) Detailed field of view with Pluto positions on the days before the event (17th, 18th, 19th and 20th of July, each 0h UTC) Finder Charts for the event on 19/20th of July Field size: 5 min 10 min 1 degree 5 degree 10 degree 20 degree 40 degree

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

Information about the target stars and Pluto

13/14 JULY 2016 (AROUND 01:15 UT JULY 14)

Coordinates:
-----------
 19h 07m 58.08s 
-21d 08' 52.5" (J2000)

 19h 08m 58.15s 
-21d 07' 03.9" (apparent at epoch)
 
Magnitudes:
----------------------------
Object      V      R     I
----------------------------
Star       15.7  15.4  15.2
Pluto      14.6  14.1  13.7
Star+Pluto 14.3  13.8  13.5
drop (mag)  0.3   0.3   0.2
----------------------------

TARGET FOR THE 19/20 JULY 2016 (AROUND 20:50 UT JULY 19)

Coordinates:
-----------
 
 19h 07m 22.12s 
-21d 10' 28.4"    (J2000)

 19h 08m 22.27s
-21d 08' 40.5"    (apparent at epoch)

Magnitudes:
----------------------------
Object      V      R     I
----------------------------
Star       14.1  13.5  12.9
Pluto      14.6  14.1  13.7
Star+Pluto 13.6  13.0  12.5
drop (mag)  1.0   1.1   1.2
---------------------------