A digital video system for observing and recording occultations

M. A. (Tony) Barry, Dave Gault, Hristo Pavlov, William Hanna, Alistair McEwan, Miroslav D. Filipovic

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    9 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Stellar occultations by asteroids and outer solar system bodies can offer ground based observers with modest telescopes and camera equipment the opportunity to probe the shape, size, atmosphere, and attendant moons or rings of these distant objects. The essential requirements of the camera and recording equipment are: good quantum efficiency and low noise; minimal dead time between images; good horological faithfulness of the image timestamps; robustness of the recording to unexpected failure; and low cost. We describe an occultation observing and recording system which attempts to fulfill these requirements and compare the system with other reported camera and recorder systems. Five systems have been built, deployed, and tested over the past three years, and we report on three representative occultation observations: one being a 9 ± 1.5 s occultation of the trans-Neptunian object 28978 Ixion (mv =15.2) at 3 seconds per frame; one being a 1.51 ± 0.017 s occultation of Deimos, the 12 km diameter satellite of Mars, at 30 frames per second; and one being a 11.04 ± 0.4 s occultation, recorded at 7.5 frames per second, of the main belt asteroid 361 Havnia, representing a low magnitude drop (Δm v = ~0.4) occultation.
    Original languageEnglish
    Article numbere031
    Number of pages8
    JournalPublications of the Astronomical Society of Australia
    Volume32
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2015

    Keywords

    • asteroids
    • instrumentation
    • observations (astronomy)
    • occultations

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