(SNES) Oh, so close, but no cigar!

[Les Coleman <colemans@riconnect.com>]

Last month Sky&Telescope had a note that 14th magnitude Pluto would 
occult a 12th magnitude star in Ophiuchus on the night of July 1, 2002.
Neat, cool and wow! EXCEPT - oops not so fast. It seems that the 
Pluto/Charon barycenter (their joint center of gravity) probably will 
occult the star but when Pluto and Charon are at the far ends of their 
elliptical orbit, they are separated by about 0.9 arcseconds and believe 
it or not but the star will slide through the teeny weeny gap!

If you would like to view this occulation, it will appear that the 
iamges will fuse into a single point BUT the tell tale dimming will not 
occur. It might be interesting to get folks at extreme latitude to 
examine this event. The accuracy of Pluto's orbit is not as good as the 
inner planets and the smallest error might allow the shadow to skip by.

Les Coleman
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