Tasmania will be one of the locations well placed to observe/record the Pluto Occultation 12 June. Astronomers from the USA, Germany & France will be coming to the Mt Canopus 1-metre observatory site, which is just 1.1 km away from my observatory. I will be including my equipment with the others to try and record this event, and also the Pluto/Charon occultation in July. A very interesting project and it will be great to be the 'centre' of the universe for a few days. The website makes for some very interesting reading.

Attached some information:

Shevill - Southern Cross Observatory, Cambridge, Tamania.

Dear friends,

The webpage for the Pluto event on the 12th of June 2006 has been
updated. I have added testimages with the Iota Occultation Camera as
well as some other explanations I got from Raymond Dusser and others.

And an excellent image from Dave Gault from Australia, using the DSI
Camera from Meade and a 10 inch instrument.

With best regards from Munich

Wolfgang
http://www.iota-es.de/pluto384.html

Some more detailled information for anyone well placed and interested in taking part in this event.

Shevill - Tasmania
The Pluto system will occult the star UCAC 2603 9859 (15mag) on June 12th, 2006
around 16h 25min UTC, as first pointed out by Dave Herald (WINOCCULT, DE405) and
Jean Lecacheux in early March. A new prediction for this important occultation
has been done by Bruno Sicardy, Observatoire d Paris/Meudon using DE413 and an
improved ephemeris of P1 and P2. The main visibility areas of the occultation by
Pluto itself will be New Zealand, Tasmania, southern Australia and Reunion.
Even more important, following the discovery of the recently discovered small
satellites P2, an occultation of this small body will take place about 1000km
north of Pluto's occultation track.

The scientific goals of an observation of this important occultation are:

* For Pluto,

* to determine the atmospheric static conditions (Temperature, Pressure
etc.) and to compare it with data from past occultations, to get an idea of the
development of Pluto's atmosphere during the loss of energy due to the
increasing distance from the sun.
* to determine winds in Pluto's atmosphere by a possible measurement of a
central flash from Tasmania or New Zealand.

* For P2 and other possible objects as well
o to determine the diameter of P2
o to determine the mean density of P2
o to determine a possible ring system around Pluto

The results are of special interest to the New Horizons mission to Pluto,
because possible smaller bodies and/or a ring system around Pluto may have a
significant impact on the mission.

For this important event I am searching URGENTLY observers with appropriate
equipment. Even a 10 inch telescope with an integrating video camera can be used to observe this event.
In case you are interested, please return a EMAIL to my address

beisker@gsf.de

Detailed information you find at our Webpage

http://www.iota-es.de/pluto384.html

Threads merged.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

I'd like to help but I've only an 8"...

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Thank's for the info will do.

Bumped as a reminder.

__________________
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.