Will we be lucky to see the occultation by  19521 Chaos here at “Sasteria”

Together with Tsamis Vaggelis we made everything ready on the evening of 22 January to observed an occultation of a 18 magnitude star in Taurus. The star should be occulted by a TNO or Trans-Neptunian Object. The name of the minor planet was Chaos and has a magnitude of 21. We needed the 20” Newton there the target star from magnitude 18 was.

By using a sensitive CCD camera we where able to see the star on the pc by only 10 seconds exp. and 3x3 binnig.

When everything was installed we took some pictures to check if we had a good s/n ratio and a clear vision on the 18 magnitude star. By comparing the star chart with the CCD field we where sure that we had the target star in the center of the field of the CCD camera. The GOTO system and the EQ-Mathis mount have showing how easy it is to surge for an invisible stars. Just put in the coordinations and here we go. As the evening went by we took pictures from 20.00 UT till 21.00 UT hoping that we could catch the occultation. We took series of 10 second exp. with a cycle of 11.5 sec.

The software AIP4WIN was used for the photometry. Two nearby stars where used as comparison stars.

After three days Vaggelis a Greek amateur astronomer and friend, mailed me the results of our undertake. Look at the explanation left and the photometric data that we captures.

From beginning of the month June we can see a SN (supernova) in the M51. See one of the picture below that I took with the 20” Newton telescope on a GoTo Mount. I could see the SN easy visual and this is still so. Last observation Visual was on the night of 24 June and the SN hasn't lost his brightness. So still the moment to catch this maybe ones in a lifetime visual SN.