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Discovery and Measurement of Double Stars by Lunar Occultations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 July 2018

R. Edward Nather
Affiliation:
McDonald Observatory and University of Texas at Austin, Texas, U.S.A.
David S. Evans
Affiliation:
McDonald Observatory and University of Texas at Austin, Texas, U.S.A.

Extract

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When a star is occulted by the dark limb of the Moon its apparent intensity drops to zero very quickly. MacMahon (1909) proposed that the time of disappearance would measure the diameter of the star, but Eddington (1909) demonstrated that diffraction effects at the lunar limb would lengthen the apparent time of disappearance to about 20 msec, and suggested that these effects would greatly limit the usefulness of the technique.

Type
First Session
Copyright
Copyright © 1971

References

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