Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Occultation Timing Association |
Roger Venable
• Roger has observed asteroidal occultations for 33 years, including over
100 multi-station deployments. He has obtained good data on 306
different asteroidal occultation events. In these 306, he has set up 572
stations that obtained good data (positive or negative data for an
occultation). Of the 572 stations, 31 were visual (in the old days), and 541 video. In
addition to the 572 good-data stations, he has set up 199 stations that
failed to record good data. The total asteroidal occultation observing
stations he has set up is thus 771.
The events that he suspects are the most important are positives on
Arrokoth, Phaethon, and Apophis, and 4-hit events on Kleopatra and
Antiope. Most of these observations have been hampered by the cloudy
and hazy skies of the southeastern U.S.
Roger authored Chapter 10 of the IOTA manual, “Unattended Video
Stations”, refining the drift-thru technique. He has also been a pioneer
in improving occultations by using larger telescopes. He made
especially long trips for near-Earth asteroids during the last two years,
helping nail down first the orbit of Phaethon.
He did the same for the smaller and more threatening Apophis,
verifying its orbit by recording occultations on March 22 and April 4,
2021 from multiple stations – adding orbital precision that shows that
Apophis will miss the Earth during its several close approaches for at
least the next 100 years. He also drove 2,647 miles (4,240 km) for the
May 2012 annular eclipse in California (Georgia to California)! Roger is also very active in ALPO and is the long time Mars section
coordinator. Roger is a retired physician, having practiced family medicine and emergency medicine for 43 years. |