* Astronomy

146 Lucina is a main belt asteroid. It is large, dark and has a carbonaceous composition.
It was discovered by Alphonse Borrelly on June 8, 1875 and named after Lucina, the Roman goddess of childbirth.
Two stellar occultations by Lucina have been observed so far, in 1982 and 1989. During the first event, a possible small satellite (6 km in diameter) was detected.

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Title: A possible satellite of (146) Lucina
Authors: Arlot, J. E.; Lecacheux, J.; Richardson, Ch.; Thuillot, W.

The video observation of the appulse of (146) Lucina with the star AGK3 + 17 deg 1309, made on April 18, 1982, at the Meudon Observatory in France, is reported. A Nocticon camera mounted on a 1-m telescope and video equipment are used for the observation. Long-focus video observation is a method which is well adapted to the observation of occultations of stars by asteroids, because photometric reduction, even for short events, and astrometric reduction are simultaneously possible. The technique also eliminates the need for a diaphragm which may produce artefacts and introduce noise in the signal. A short extinction, which is not due to the asteroid itself, is observed during the observation at Meudon and leads to the postulation of the existence of a faint satellite in the neighbourhood of (146) Lucina. Analysis of the short secondary event indicates that the 0.6-sec occultation corresponds to a 5.7-km chord, which is the lower limit of the satellite's diameter, and that the projected distance of the satellite to the centre of the primary is nearly 1600 km at the occultation time.

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On the 25 September 2007 , 07:38 UT, the magnitude 13.8 asteroid, (146) Lucina, will occult the magnitude 10.9 star UCAC2 39288450.

Position(2000): RA 6 25 4.535, Dec +21 12 59.09

Mexico 07:33 UT
Azores 7:38 UT
Spain 740 UT
Pakistan 7:44 UT

(146) Lucina.kmz
Google Sky file

-- Edited by Blobrana at 14:12, 2008-01-12