I recorded an approximate 4 second occultation by minor planet (1166) Sakuntala at 04:24 this (Friday) morning from the ATMoB Ed Knight Observatory. Equipment included the EKO C14, a Supercircuits PC164EX2 camera and a BlackBox Sprite GPS-based video time inserter. Exact times of this occultation were; D: 08:24:38.969 UT R: 08:24:43.700 UT 1166 Sakuntala is [...]

I’m going to be the featured speaker at the Annual Cookout meeting of the Amateur Astronomical Society of Rhode Island (known as the Skyscrapers) on July 10th at 4:00pm. The title of my talk, “Fame, Fortune and Discoveries in the Occult” is a play on the ‘other’ meaning of occult, but since I’m an astronomer [...]

The paper on 2002 TX300 or KBO 55636 was (finally) published in Nature magazine.  It’s exciting for me, because even though I was one of many researchers involved in the project, it was a first in science and a first for me, though I hope it won’t be the last. Jim Elliot and his team were able [...]

Last winter I showed off the SCORE setup at the monthly meeting of my astronomy club. Bob Naeye, Editor in Chief of Sky and Telescope, was at the meeting and took special interest in the Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston’s cooperative participation with the MIT Planetary Astronomy Lab’s research on Kuiper Belt Objects. Bob later contacted me to ask more [...]

This project was driven out of necessity. Several factors make it challenging to record occultation timings, and a couple more so in the New England winters. Let me start with an overview of the process setting up before and tearing down after capturing lunar grazes and stellar occultations.   First, one has to assemble the [...]