Track of Pluto's shadow during occultation on July 20, 2002

The path of Pluto's shadow (grey region) during the July 20, 2002 occultation. The shadow has a diameter of about 2300 km and moves from right to left; the timings along the central line are indicated in one-minute intervals (Universal Time - UT). The width of the gray area corresponds to the regions where more than 50% of the light from the star P126 A was attenuated by Pluto's atmosphere. The dotted lines indicate where the stellar flux was attenuated by more than 10%. The maximum duration of the occultation (for observers located at the middle of the shadow track) was about 3 min. The plot is based on astrometric measurements posted at the MIT site. Once completely analyzed, the VLT NACO images will provide significantly better accuracy on the location of this track and therefore a solid basis for the interpretation of the photometric observations obtained with other telescopes.