Southern States - Andhra Pradesh-Hyderabad   

Another rare spectacle on the horizon

By Our Staff Reporter

HYDERABAD Oct.28. Another rare celestial spectacle is about to happen next month that would be visible in several parts of the State. This astronomical phenomenon on November 1, known as `occultation', occurs when a big object passes across a faraway smaller object causing an eclipse.

In this case, a giant asteroid, `Antigone', would be occulting a faint ninth magnitude star in the constellation of Cancer. The asteroid, one of the many floating between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, is of the size of 125 km in diameter and is at a distance of three times the distance between the earth and the sun just beyond the orbit of Mars.

The celestial event would be visible from the skies of Andhra Pradesh from Nizamabad up to the east coast with Karimnagar, Warangal and Visakhapatnam too in its path. It would start from 4.41 a.m. and would continue for about 11 seconds. But, since the asteroid and the star are very faint, the spectacle would be visible only through a telescope, a press release from the Secretary of the Association of Hyderabad Amateur Astronomers, Y. Ravi Kiron, said here on Tuesday.

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