On 26 Jan 2007, at 17:49, Chuck Hards wrote:
So was it definitely a graze from your location, Patrick? Not a graze. In fact, I'm told my data compared to others indicate I was very close to the centerline.
There was some starlight twinkling at a very low level throughout the occultation. The light seen during "totality" is the light from the asteroid. The asteroid, BTW, showed up clearly on the tape up until a few minutes before the occultation when it and the star appeared to merge.
Dissappearance and reappearance were very gradual on the video- more gradual than I would have thought. Less than a second but slow enough to easily perceive. For those who like data, disappearance took from 09:46:51.04396 to 09:46:51.05397 (~.01")
From your comment, you've seen some occultations that were much more gradual? I can't comment on occultations by minor planets because I don't have anything to compare to. I've only seen one before and in that case the star just barely registered on the video and the MP did not show at all.
However, every time I've seen the Moon occult Aldebaran it always takes a few video frames to disappear (I'm told that's because Aldebaran is so big). Patrick