Hi all,
it's time to become quantitative about testing Pluto-Charon mutual events in
celestia.Sci using the
latest Spice kernels (see JohnVV's posts).
.
Here is a nice one from the seminal paper by
Marc Buie et al. http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~buie/biblio/pub015.pdf+++++++++++++++++++++
1987 Aug 13 @ 8:17 UTC
+++++++++++++++++++++
[By all means, click on image for a bigger display!] Attachment:
pluto-ecl_1987_8_13_big.jpg [ 66.56 KiB | Viewed 1268 times ]
The agreement of the celestia.Sci simulation with the actual earth-bound observation
is again perfect! In the foreground you see Charon, the shadow of which eclipses a region on Pluto. As you can read off the date / time display of this mid-eclipse image, the agreement between prediction and observation could hardly be better.
Here is another one, this time Pluto's shadow is eclipsing Charon
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1986 Dec 29 @ 11h 51 ...14h 0m (max!)... 16h 26m
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
[By all means, click on image for a bigger display, then hit your browser's fullscreen key (F11)] Attachment:
charon-ecl_1986_12_29_big.jpg [ 166.82 KiB | Viewed 1264 times ]
This time the event lasts much longer. My screenshot with
celestia.Sci is from near eclipse maximum around 14h 29m 30 s. The agreement with the prediction is again very satisfactory...
There are many more mutual event predictions that will help to assert critically the accuracy of the involved orbits. Note that the
Light Travel delay (
LT) of
04 h 30 m 12.462 s is again crucial for obtaining the above agreement!
Fridger
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). Given all the new Spice-based precision of 2016, it may be curious to compare...I checked the top-leftmost and the bottom left images and found coincidence!