Via Terry Mosley:
3. OBSERVATION WANTED: Sep 15:
IMPORTANT: Dr Pedro Lacerda of the Astrophysics Dept at QUB has asked me if any IAA members (or others), would be able to help with an important observation on Sep 15, at about 20.12 UT (21.12 BST).
2005 UQ513 is an Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt Object that is predicted to pass in front of a 14th mag star, and so occult it. The magnitude of 2005 UQ513 is about 21, so in effect the star will disappear from any location along the actual occultation track, unless the star is an undetected double star: in that case if only one component is occulted, the other star may remain visible, depending on its brightness.
The predicted occultation track (which may be slightly in error) passes right over Ireland, and in fact Ireland and Scotland are the best placed countries in the world to observe this event!
Observing the duration of this event can give accurate information about the size and shape of the object. We need at least 10-second time sampling to get good ingress and egress times.
Ideally, if we could get someone in the Northern end of the island and someone else in the S end that would be even better because we'd get more chords sampling the shape of the EKBO.
The details of the predicted event are at
fraserkbos.com/?q=2005UQ513-2013-09-15-20-16
.
I know that there are some amateurs (and professionals) in Ireland who have suitable equipment to attempt this observation, which could yield some very useful information not obtainable in any other way. Of course, even negative observations are valuable, as they constrain the maximum size of the object.
The star is at: RA: 00h 30m 11.89s; Dec: + 30deg 37' 23.801". (That's near Delta Andromedae)
If you would like to have a go, please report directly to Pedro at lacerda.pedro@gmail.com, copy to me, so I know what's happening.
  