Abstract
In 1997 the Sun and the Earth passed through the equatorial plane of Jupiter and therefore through the orbital planes of its main satellites. During this period, mutual eclipses and occultations occurred and were observed. We investigate the precision of the catalogue to produce improved data for the development of dynamical models. Light curves of mutual eclipses and occultations were recorded by the observers of the international campaign PHEMU97 organized by the Institut de Mecanique Celeste, Paris, France. We made 275 observations of 148 mutual events from 42 sites. For each observation, information is given about the telescope, the receiver, the site and the observational conditions. This paper gathers together the data and gives a first estimate of the precision. The catalogue of these rare events represents a collection of improved accurate astrometric data useful for the development of dynamical models.
Highlights
Observations of mutual events of natural satellites have been performed intensively since 1973 and they have proved to be a very accurate way to obtain astrometric measurements of natural satellites
The Jovian declinations of the Earth and the Sun become zero and since the orbital plane of the Galilean satellites is very close to the equatorial plane of Jupiter, the satellites occult and eclipse each other
This catalogue provides observational information and reduced data issued from the PHEMU97 campaign
Summary
Observations of mutual events of natural satellites have been performed intensively since 1973 and they have proved to be a very accurate way to obtain astrometric measurements of natural satellites. Aim of the present paper is to provide the photometric data and the observational parameters useful for future work on the improvement of dynamical models as well as of models of the surfaces of the satellites. These data will be available through the data base NSDC dedicated to the natural satellites (http://www.imcce.fr/nsdc)
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