IOTA taking over from ILOC by Dave Herald in IOTA Annual Meeting 2009

Implementation of collecting lunar occultations working well
In 2009 to date, 3190 observations
Data errors - very rare
Formal archiving – when graze revision completed
Thanks to regional coordinators

Double stars - background

Lunar Occultations  RGO & ILOC made no corrections, and made no use of the data
Discovery claims were frequently only known within the occultation community. The double star community were in ignorance.
Maintaining accurate double star info is a MAJOR task
Need to properly handle double stars

Double stars – report cycle

Asteroidals – to regional coordinators
Lunars – ultimately to Brian Loader (NZ)
Papers written for JDSO (authorship etc..)
USNO picks up results from JDSO
Occult data periodically updated with latest USNO data
Key step – the writing of papers for the JDSO
To assist, some ‘template’ papers have been developed and ‘approved’ by USNO and JDSO
Of course, variations are to be expected
Important to ‘strike while the iron is hot’
Peer review is part of the process. And that means being able to handle ‘difficult’ questions

Doubles – Occult support -

asteroidals

Asteroidal predictions – a new indicator in predictions that a star is a double
Ability to directly access double details from Occult (predictions and observations)
Ability to list star catalogue equivalents (important for JDSO paper)

Lunar Predictions

Complete revision of double star files (100% more pairings!)
Predictions include alert messages – separations <2”
Ability to directly access double details from Occult (predictions and observations)
Complete double details in graze prediction
Ability to generate a double star report containing information needed to analyse the double star, and to email it [to Brian Loader].

Lunar Analysis

Ability to analyse observations to derive PA and separation
Includes ability to apply the lunar slope using the Kaguya data
Ability to list star catalogue equivalents (important for JDSO paper)

Kaguya lunar profiles

Data available from early November
Key data is Laser altimeter data
Altitude data has to be transformed into a lunar limb profile
Derived a fast & reliable way to do this.
Created a replacement for the Watts charts
Ability to plot the hi-resolution data
Fit to past grazes is excellent
Occasionally the graze results show inconsistencies with Kaguya