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Diotima occultation 1 In the night of January 7th 2000 at 21:42 UT, I captured the stellar occultation of the 12,5 mag asteroid (423) Diotima. The 11,5 mag occulted star was GCS 2470:150. I captured the event with a fixed telescope letting the stars trail on the CCD frame. The trace at the center of the 80 seconds image is that of the star. At the center one can see the 1 mag luminosity fall due to the asteroid passing OVER the star. This event lasted roughly 10 seconds. As far as I know no one else captured this event with CCD or other device. A friend of mine, Andrea Manna, observed visually at about 10km distance and confirmed the occultation. The field of view is about 20 x 20 arcminutes. In the gif-animated file one can see Diotima roughly 30 minutes before and 50 minutes after the occultation.

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