1.9s duration, 32 deg altitude in the west, in Aries
This event is difficult; dim, and short duration, but passes right through Santa Cruz on a Friday night before midnight, with decent enough rank, at a convenient time and altitude. Worth a go. The duration is only 1.9 seconds, and the faintness will require significant integration, but the depth of 1.5 magnitudes should be pretty clear. The path clips Santa Cruz but is centered only down closer to Moss Landing, which for this tough event is probably too much ga$ money to invest, given the likely limited value accuracy of the timings. We can improve the orbit but perhaps not get a good handle on the shape. I plan to try it from home. Unfortunately, Karl's probably too far north to get a "hit", but a miss would still be worthwhile.
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Karl saw clouds coming in from that direction and cancelled out. I was glad the weekend arrived and celebrated a bit with a micro-road trip. The event wasn't going to be visible from home - the low west is impossible due to trees. The path promised a bit of extra odds if I set up in Wilder Ranch. I gassed up at Rotten Robbie on the way, got into the park, and drove into the "authorized vehicles only" area, getting into the artichoke fields near the beach cliffs on the west side of the park. Some thin clouds were in the east, and south, but it looked clear over the ocean where I was aimed. This also had Paul Maley and David Dunham on the path. And Kirk of course.
As of 2/21, IOTA says that Maley's positive looks likely valid but not conclusive and might be taken out of the reported astrometries, in which case my miss would also not show up on the IOTA results. DH will decide later.
Richard Nolthenius
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For a central occultation the light curve should have dropped to 1/4 of full strength, so 300 counts was avg max and so it should have dropped to ~75. It clearly didn't and the few noise points above 100 are quickly reversed on later points so - it's a miss.
Kirk Bender
Kirk set up on his driveway, got good data... a miss. Since the path was largely south of us, and I was south of Kirk, it's no surprise he had a miss, and Karl would have also gotten a miss if his skies had cleared. Paul Maley may have gotten the event, by eye on his light curve, from the centerline.
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