[elesiuta]

Great article, I've always been impressed by this too. It's neat that it sounds like even amateurs with nothing but a regular DSLR can contribute to this as well.

> By precisely timing the duration of the occultation from many sites simultaneously, they can refine their knowledge of the size and shape of the asteroid.

> Betelgeuse is the 10th brightest star in our skies (+0.5 magnitude), so observers need only modest equipment to participate.

> the easiest way to capture the event is to use a simple DSLR camera on a tripod ... video frames must have a short (few-millisecond) exposure time ... Millisecond accuracy timing is crucial ... [an app] for timestamping occultation observations is called Occult Flash Tag (Android) or AstroFlashTimer (iPhone)

[nsajko]

> Occult Flash Tag (Android)

Sadly this seems abandoned and it seems to have been removed from the Play Store. It's also not on F-Droid, even though it does seems to have a Git repo on Github.

[kristopolous]

I can imagine it helps to normalize the various perturbations from atmospheric non uniformity which may be able to help the higher quality measurements decrease the noise.