Direct determination of asteroid diameters from occultation observations

Of the available earth-based techniques for determining asteroid diameters, observation of stellar occultations involving asteroids is clearly the most direct. The high degree of accuracy achievable by this method has already been demonstrated in the case of Pallas, whose mean diameter has been measured with a standard error of plus or minus 2%. In this paper the problems, results and prospects of the stellar occultation technique are reviewed. It is shown that, with the use of a network of small, portable telescopes, the method is currently applicable to a large number of asteroids. The best results can be expected for asteroids of large angular diameter and regular shape. The potential of lunar occultation observations for asteroid diameter measurements is also briefly discussed.