US, Canada to witness rare astronomical phenomenon

Voice of Russia | Mar 20, 2014

New York dwellers will observe a rare eclipse tonight. An asteroid will black out one of the brightest stars.The asteroid's name is 163 Erigone. This is a huge 45-mile (73-kilometer) wide asteroid of the star belt between Mars and Jupiter. It will black out Regulus, the brightest star of the Constellation Leo. The eclipse begins at 06:00 GMT and will last for only 14 seconds.

The event is unusual due to a large audience of some 20 million people and the fact that Regulus is extremely bright star.

Due to weather conditions, the eclipse will be visible with a naked eye from New York and other cities, and towns in the north-east of the US and the east of Canada.

The star will vanish from sight for up to 14 seconds for New Yorkers, and a minute or two later further north.

"Regulus shines right through moonlight and light pollution that's in the sky - even the light pollution over a city like New York," says Alan MacRobert, a senior editor at Sky & Telescope magazine.

A special term for this event is "occultation" that derives from the Latin word "to hid". Many astronomer have observed asteroid occultations through their telescopes dozens of times, but this case is unusual. This is the first time in history that an occultation of such a bright star by an asteroid has been predicted to cross such a heavily populated area.

Asteroid occultation timers, who are distinguished members of astronomer's society, want to enlist thousands of ordinary citizens in their citizen-science project in order to describe the event more thoroughly.

The project is launched by the International Occultation Timing Association (IOTA).

The goal is to see whether the star disappears as seen from your location, and for how long — especially if you can time the event to high precision.

Astronomers are eager to use this data in order to obtain precise information about Erigone's size and shape. There is no other way to do this procedure, besides sending a spacecraft there. This has been done for many asteroids in the past that have occulted fainter stars.

Regulus is the brightest star in the constellation Leo and one of the brightest stars in the night sky, lying approximately 79 light years from Earth. Regulus is a multiple star system composed of four stars that are organized into two pairs.

Voice of Russia, the Daily Mail