International Occultation Timing Association

European Section 

Occultation of HIP 107302 by Jupiter
on the 3rd of August 2009

The occultation has been observed from many stations and observatories around the world! The star could be seen up to 20 minutes in the Jovian atmosphere, the movement of its position relative to the Jovian disk and the tremendous flickering due to structures in the atmosphere of Jupiter could be recorded. At first you can find a list of stations contributing to our campaign. Read more...

Information about the possible impact on Jupiter (21^st July 2009) concerning the occultation

Visible from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas!

The star HIP 107302 with visual magnitude 6m0 is occulted by Jupiter on the 3rd of August. This is the brightest star, which will be occulted for the next more than 100 years visible from Europe. In the near future, there is only on more occultation with a similar bright star, but this is only visible from western southern America (Chile...). For the rest of us, no similar occultation will take place for generations!

Therefore, its not only a spectacular show for the "Year of Astronomy 2009", but also a great opportunity to gain information about the Jovian atmosphere by earthbound astronomy.

But keep in mind, that even a 6th magnitude star is hard to see on Jovian's limb, when it disappears or reappears! You need an excellent air quality and a telescope perhaps larger than 10 inch in diameter.

IOTA-ES will maintain a special website http://jupiter2009.iota-es.de all over the year for this event, giving all necessary informations for a successful observation as well as

Using WINOCCULT, a prediction for this event has been generated in the following figure:

A movie has been generated, to give you the imagination even before the real event. And you see, what you will miss, if you don't look! The circle in the center of the movie is the earth, which gives the position of the star. The ring system can be seen on the movie, which does NOT occult the star and several jovian satellites as well.The movie starts at 3rd of August, 18h UTC and ends at 4th of August, 1h UTC.

In the next months more informations will be published, concerning the history and future of stellar occultations by Jupiter, its scientific rational, about observational techniques and post event data analysis as well.  We encourage other groups, to send infos about their observational program, about ideas and technology, in order to present their material on this website.

Here informations about the following subjects can be found:

• The star

• Filtering (methane bands!)

• Results of measurements with different methane band filters

• Dis- and reappearance for different locations

• The timeline of the recordings

• History

Send material and infos as well as requests for infos to info@iota-es.de