Bill,

Thanks for your comments on minor planet orbit updates. You asked about
gaining access to minor planet occultation predictions for areas other than
North America, Europe and Japan. For the year 2000, Edwin has placed .pdf
and .gz (Gunzip compressed PostScript files) on an ftp site. The URL for
the base directory is ftp://ftp.ster.kuleuven.ac.be/dist/vvs/asteroids/2000

The Readme.txt file contains some background info including Edwin's scheme
for the various regions into which occultation events are grouped. There
are 8 regions (and Antarctica does not really fall in any of them - a check
in regions 2 (South America), 4 (South Africa) and 8 (Australia/New Zealand)
should do though). In the directory, all of the detailed predictions for
the whole world are grouped in together with a file numbering scheme
reflecting star catalogue types and time of event rather than region. Have a
look in the OCCREG00.txt file to see all the predictions for the whole world
sumarised with the relevent regions identified. The file identifiers are
given if you want to follow up a particular event. While I don't know the
details, be warned that the file names for individuals event may change -
the file numbers on the paper prediction sent out by Graham Blow for the
RASNZ Occultation Section don't match the current file names for the same
events.

For observers here in Region 8 (Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea),
the RASNZ Occultation Section website http://occsec.wellington.net.nz has a
full set of Goffin's predictions tabled on the page
http://occsec.wellington.net.nz/planet/2000/planoc00.htm with links to
anotated .gif versions of Goffin's charts. If you surf there right now, you
won't see all of the years events because I have been a bit slack in
preparing the .gifs :) But if you look at the page in a text editor, you
will see the full list - I have just 'commented out' those events for which
I have not yet prepared a .gif.

Hope that helps .... and is of some interest to other list readers. I
realise this is getting a bit off subject for this list so please accept my
apologies.

Stephen Kerr
Rockhampton, QLD
Australia.