[time-nuts] telling time without a clock

[J. Forster]

It's old, but how about the SAO Atlas & catalog. It goes to something like
7th Mag, so there are lots to pick from.

-John

==========


> On 1/26/12 2:55 PM, Jim Palfreyman wrote:
>> As a reasonably experienced occultation observer (and the very reason I
>> got
>> into being a time-nut - so I could time these observations), the main
>> problem is that the number of binocular-observable occultations is
>> actually
>> quite rare. When the star appears or disappears behind the bright limb
>> it
>> is actually hard to see - even if the star is very bright. When the moon
>> is
>> nearly full, even disappearances behind the dark limb are hard.
>
> Yes, that's what I observed when I was trying it a while ago..
>
>>
>> So ideally you want bright star disappearences on a dark limb with a
>> moon
>> before first quarter. (Last quarter as well - but then it's a
>> reappearance
>> and you don't quite know where to look).
>
> that would sort of limit you to 1 week out of 4. But better than
> nothing, for a technique that requires no outside assistance.
>
>>
>> This limits the number of bright stars quite drastically. And then you
>> have
>> clouds...
>>
>
> Yeah, that is something I don't have a feel for.. How many stars are
> candidates? I assume you could get a moon RA/declination list, and then
> run that against the star list.
>
>   This is one of those things that  I was hoping there's probably
> someone who has a program that can do the search trivially.
>
> I have a moon ephemeris, but I haven't found a convenient star catalog
> (something in ASCII that has ID, RA, Dec, Mag would be nice)
>
>
>
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