Post Trip Photo page
Perfect weather was the story for this installment. We had a good turnout from the Astronomy club helpers too - Shahram, Tom, and Kirk all contributed their efforts to make it a great weekend. The lunar grazing occultation, however, proved to be tougher than I realized. I hadn't QUITE noticed that the moon phase was not really "last quarter", but 61% waning, which made for a couple of degrees of bright features even on the nominal dark limb. This made the first "D" impossible, and the first "R" extremely tough for a video recording, and impossible for the visual observers. The 2nd mountain was easy, but because the first mountain was lost, and various inexperience and software issues, we got no data from the station left at the campsite. I set up a half mile away and did get a good video recording, from which I extracted 3 timings. But I did not have my GPS and figured I'd just Google-Earth a position. But Google Earth doesn't have the highest resolution pictures of this area, and I'm not sure where I was when looking at the Google Earth aerial photos. I do know clearly where I was when driving by it, and so I fear I'll have to wait until our next trip to Pinnacles before I can submit the actual report.
D: missed, on bright limb
R: 8:48:33.66
D: 8:49:18.24
R: 8:49:43.95
8.9 magnitude graze: R= 8:50:06.84
I'll submit photos as I find time...