The predictions in this section are based on star catalogs produced by the Rio de Janeiro group, with star positions measured against the UCAC2 catalog.

The TNO's offsets (with respect to the Horizons JPL ephemerides) were measured by the same group between 2007 and 2011.

NB. The offsets are written in the upper right corner on charts. Their calculations and the reference ephemerides used are given in the tables available in each page.

Note that in a few cases, the shadow track is too far away from Earth to be visible on the maps. The prediction has been maintained, however, in case the event be eventually visible once astrometric update is available. The distance of closest approach and position angle of the body wrt the star are written at the bottom of the map, and allow one to derive the actual the shadow path in those cases.

Pluto and satellites offsets are given with respect to the DE413 barycentric ephemeris (while PLU17 is used for the satellites), and are based on a linear extrapolation of the offsets we (Paris group and Rio group) determined using Pluto and Charon occultations between 2005 and 2011. A linear extrapolation of this offset for 2012 has been applied at each date for Pluto, Charon, Nix and Hydra. These offsets should be refined prior to each event.

Note that the magnitudes given in the lower line are R* and K* (and not V* and R*, as usual), so that it is possible to point out very red stars that are unreachable in visible bands, but observable in J, H or K.

NB. a K magnitude close to 50 means that the star is not in the 2mass catalog, usually because it is too faint.

!!Note also that those magnitudes, with a star symbol "*", are normalized to a common shadow velocity of 20 km/sec !!!
We are using for that the following formula:

Bruno Sicardy and the Rio group

Independent predictions are given on the following links:

IOTA European Section page
Leslie's Young page
MIT page