Occultation events / predictions
Basic information and usage
Usage: As quick start you only have to enter the latitude and longitude of your observing site in decimal degrees (long: + is east of Greenwich), seperated by a comma or space. Alternatively you can enter the 3-letter MPC station code (always in the form XXX, even for stations 000...099). In that case the site name will be taken from the MPC record. Note P1: For asteroid predictions (db: asteroids) you can set minimum occultation probability at the observer site P1 to 50 (%) or even higher to get just events close to your site. For CeTNOs and Comets you should set P1 very low (< 5-10), otherwise you will see almost no events as the probability in general is much lower for most of these occultations. Occultation Databases
Asteroids: The main (default) database contains worldwide predictions of stellar occultations by asteroids (currently for about 2-6 months time span before a new run is made; otherwise the DB would be too large and it will take too much time to get the event list). Predictions are for asteroids (sometimes plus some special targets) with diam > 10 km and Gaia (e)DR3 stars brighter than G = 15 mag. JPL Horizons (JPLH) ephemerides are used by default. CeTNOs: This database contains occultations by Centaurs (diam > 50 km) and TNOs (diam > 150 km) for the whole year. Gaia (e)DR3 stars brigther than G = 18 mag. JPL Horizons (JPLH) ephemerides are used by default. Comets: A small list of numbered comets with expected diameter > 5 km (JPL SBDB). Currently ~25 comets. Gaia (e)DR3 stars brighter than G = 15 mag. JPL Horizons (JPLH) ephemerides are used by default. Several other databases for special purposes or dedicated projects. |