This has a lower rank than many but that means getting good timings will improve the orbit. Odds of a "hit" are 50/50 from Santa Cruz and higher for Karl closer to the centerline. The target star is 14.2 and the combined image is 13.6. It's in a dark sky, 28 degrees up due south, so with decent conditions it ought to be do-able, but integration will be necessary.
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Kirk and I both had clear dry skies and got good data on this difficult event. Karl had trouble with the VTI and was not able to observe.
Nolthenius Results
I used Google Earth to see if I could observe from home, but the altitude and azimuth were wrong, and while I could get it from the street, there was a bright streetlight in the same direction. And too, I was so close to Kirk it made sense to do a short drive north to better fill in the distance to Derek's site. I found a spot on Mill St near De Laveaga that had a good dark view in that direction and no one came out to bug me; I parked right on the road.
I used 16x, hoping to do 8x as the asteroid and star merged, but it was still too noisy I judged. The light curve says I made a good choice to stay at 16x because there were many 16x integrations that were at 0, but only during the occultation was there a good long period of low points, and good enough to get a solid 0 chance of a false positive. The star was 13.6 combined and the star itself was 14.1 so at 28 degrees altitude that's tough. Dark skies helped, seeing was average. No clouds, dry.
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Kirk Bender Results
Kirk observed from his driveway, at 8x, and visual watching during recording says he got a similar occultation as mine. Nice to see he got 8x to work well.
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