The Occultation of a 10.0 Star by The Asteroid Schluter

Dec 2, 2021 at 12:48am

Preston Predictions

 

This event has good rank, is bright, and should be easy to get good data. The downside is that the event only lasts 1.9 sec at maximum, so it's critical to not integrate, but instead use the 2x setting to maximize time resolution. The other problem is that it occurs at 80 degrees altitude, and is at 85 degrees altitude 20 minutes before the event, so image rotation will be strong during the time before and during the event. When reducing in PyMovie, this may require using two tracking stars so that image rotation can be accomodated. The Celestron 8SE has a spotty history of going to and tracking stars at this high an altitude, so it may be an adventure. In any case, we should use the 2" diagonal, use the Q70 eyepiece to ID the field, then leave on the diagonal and insert a 2" - to 1.25" adapter and then the camera and refocus. You'll also need to mount the telescope inside the dovetail jaws with it shoved as absolutely far in as it will go, in order for the diagonal to clear the mount base.

Kirk Bender is on this OW map, but work will prevent him from trying it.

   

 

Results:

Success! I was worried - the very high altitude made this one a tough go for the 8SE alt-az telescope. It did fine, although I notice that my pattern matching skills have gotten a bit flabby what with the accurate orientation of nearly all other events charts. I knew this would not be the case tonight, but the field was also much smaller than I anticipated. I believe it may have to do with the fact that I took advantage of Kirk's noticing that the 2" diagonal would just clear the base if the scope was pushed as far up the dovetail clamp fork arm as possible, allowing it to remain in the scope. This is a major time saver if you have to somehow go back and forth between wide eyepiece view and narrow Watec view. But the compromise may be that the distance between the 0.5x reducer lens and the telescope optics reduces the FOV a little more than using the 0.5x on the Watec and a 1.25" diagonal. It would pay to do some experimenting and logging of experiences on a clear night over the coming winter break, when I have time. I was lucky here that a comparable magnitude star to the target was still in the field and available for tracking and comparison. A good success in the end. The site chosen was good too (for now). There's a couple of adjacent properties that are now vacant after the CZU fire of summer '20 burned then out, and trees there as well. It's got a great view of the sky and I was not bothered. Rebuilding will change that but who knows? For now, it's a good high elevation choice for events.

     

 

PyOTE log file

The profile indicates an oblong object, although just two chords caught it.