65803 Didymos - occultation on April 9, 2021

Didymos is an Earth crossing asteroid target of the NASA/DART and ESA/Hera mission.

The April 9th occultation et 22:34 UT (night of Friday to Saturday) will involve a 13.2 mag star . The maximum expected duration is 0.24 seconds (see general chart here below for timings). The event will be observable in Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland.

The star is in the constellation of Lion, is part of Gaia EDR3 and all its data are here.

• Click here for the Finding chart

This is a difficult event as the asteroid is less than ∞ 800 m in average diameter! Please be sure to carefully check the path. Here below you can find a link to Google Earth file for:

• A path obtained from orbital fit by Orbfit (P. Tanga): 65803 Didymos on 2021 Apr 9.kmz
• A path from the same data set, but produced by NIMA (Lucky Star, J. Desmars), with additional reference lines for placing the observers, spaced by 400 m (on the sky plane): Didymos_20210409_NIMAv210407_GeDR3.kmz

There will be a Lucky Star feed on OW for this event with a slightly different prediction. The two path are compatible within their error bars.

A field trip is being set up in Greece, where weather conditions are good. We invite you to coordinate with us if you have a mobile station, so that we can ensure a good coverage across track.

This call for observations is issued in the frame of a NEA monitoring program, connected to ESA/Hera (D. Souami, P. Tanga, K. Tsiganis, members of the investigation team) , and of the Lucky Star collaboration (J. Desmars, B. Sicardy).

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-- PaoloTanga - 08 Apr 2021

• 2021_04_09 65803 Didymos.png: