Astronomers Predict Eclipse of Naked-Eye Star by an Asteroid Monday Morning, Nov. 20
Summary
If you are within a 65-mile (104-km)-wide band crossing the Midwest and western Canada, you can see the naked-eye star Tejat wink out for about 10 seconds as it is covered by the asteroid Sulamitis shortly before sunrise Monday morning, November 20. Millions of early risers in Charleston and Huntington, West Virginia; Dayton, Ohio; Muncie and Gary, Indiana; Chicago, Illinois; Madison and Eau Claire, Wisconsin; St. Paul, Minnesota; Grand Forks, North Dakota; Brandon, Manitoba; and many other smaller towns in the path have a chance to see this event, the eclipse of the brightest star predicted to be eclipsed by an asteroid as seen from the U.S.A. since such predictions have been computed starting in 1975. This path will be flanked to the north and south by 11-mile (18-km) wide zones where the star will be partially covered for a few seconds, causing it to dim considerably, but not completely disappear. The path also crosses southwestern Virginia and North Carolina, but the event occurs too close to sunrise there; small telescopes will be needed there to see the star in the bright dawn twilight. The path location was predicted on November 11 by Dr. Martin Federspiel at the Freiburg Planetarium in Freiburg, Germany (e-mail martin@astro.unibas.ch, phone +49-761-2017946), using accurate observations of Sulamitis obtained by Ronald Stone at the U. S. Naval Observatory in Flagstaff, AZ (e-mail rcs@nofs.navy.mil) and by Bill Owen at Jet Propulsion Laboratorys Table Mountain Observatory near Wrightwood, CA (e-mail wmo@jpl.nasa.gov) up through November 8.