Lunar occultations Review/update on recent developments

Implementation of collecting lunar occultations working well In 2009 to date, 3190 observations Data errors - very rare Formal archiving – when graze revision completed Thanks to regional coordinators IOTA taking over from ILOC

Lunar Occultations RGO & ILOC made no corrections, and made no use of the data Discovery claims were frequently only known within the occultation community. The double star community were in ignorance. Maintaining accurate double star info is a MAJOR task Need to properly handle double stars Double stars - background

Asteroidals – to regional coordinators Lunars – ultimately to Brian Loader (NZ) Papers written for JDSO (authorship etc..) USNO picks up results from JDSO Occult data periodically updated with latest USNO data Double stars – report cycle

Key step – the writing of papers for the JDSO To assist, some template papers have been developed and approved by USNO and JDSO Of course, variations are to be expected Important to strike while the iron is hot Peer review is part of the process. And that means being able to handle difficult questions Double stars – report cycle

Asteroidal predictions – a new indicator in predictions that a star is a double Ability to directly access double details from Occult (predictions and observations) Ability to list star catalogue equivalents (important for JDSO paper) Doubles – Occult support - asteroidals

Complete revision of double star files (100% more pairings!) Predictions include alert messages – separations <2 Ability to directly access double details from Occult (predictions and observations) Complete double details in graze prediction Doubles – Occult support – Lunar Preds

Ability to generate a double star report containing information needed to analyse the double star, and to it [to Brian Loader]. Doubles – Occult support – Lunar Obs

Ability to analyse observations to derive PA and separation Includes ability to apply the lunar slope using the Kaguya data Ability to list star catalogue equivalents (important for JDSO paper) Doubles – Occult support – Lunar Anal

Data available from early November Key data is Laser altimeter data Altitude data has to be transformed into a lunar limb profile Derived a fast & reliable way to do this. Kaguya lunar profiles

Created a replacement for the Watts charts Ability to plot the hi-resolution data Fit to past grazes is excellent Occasionally the graze results show inconsistencies with Kaguya Kaguya lunar profiles