Event's at 55 degrees altitude in the Shield of Orion, 5.1 sec dip of 0.3 magnitude, down from 10.9 to 11.2 magnitude. Odds for my possible site at Ano Nuevo are 58%, but even at home my odds are 41% so I'm not sure if I'll make the journey. I may just try it from home.
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An hour before the event, I suddenly felt energetic and optimistic enough to change plans, from observing in my driveway to instead driving north to Davenport and filling in the. It was cloudlessgap between the congestion at the eastern limit and closer to the centerline. I figured I could spend 20 minutes driving and still have 40 minutes to set up. 100 yards up the street, I realized I'd forgotten the tripod, turned around, grabbed it, and now had 50 minutes to get to a site and set up. On the drive, I know Hwy 1 north of Santa Cruz very very well, and I played it in my mind to decide on a quiet place that wouldn't be populated by a homeless RV, nor get headlights, and be quiet enough. I settled on a small access road to the houses above the old Cemex plant. I was set up and had the target star on the LCD screen of the camcorder with 15 minutes to spare. I defocused slightly to avoid saturation, and moved around the rather sparse star field to find a comparison star that was both a bit brighter than the target, and had no other stars that might interfere with the photometry apertures.
The sky was clear, although while the sun was still up there was a few scattered light clouds. There was no moon, and not close enough to city lights to see low altitude clouds. The star was 55 degrees up, and convective instability after yesterday's cold front made for perhaps more scintillation.
Perhaps consistent with an occultation if it was a few seconds late, but S/N was low |
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The observed dip in this zoom in seems small compared to the predicted 0.33 magnitude dip. Or it might be noise. I'll wait to see how the other light curves look. |
The Pyote light curve, using the comparison star and the 2x frame integration (4x setting). RMS scatter of points from the mean was about the same as the expected depth, so an occultation up to maybe 3/4 second could be missed in the data |
My site, north of the old Cemex plant |
Kirk's Report: Also a miss, from Santa Cruz . Observing time period: 3:52:32 to 3:54:42 . His LiMovie CSV file
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