This is a high rank event with center line through Santa Cruz and northern limit a bit north of Karl. It's a good event for getting good astrometry if all 3 of "Team Santa Cruz" can get this. Fog may force me to higher ground, or high pressure may keep fog away. The event lasts up to 1.2 seconds and the drop is full. Target is in Southern Scorpius, 8 degrees below Antares.
Alt=19, Az=173 so it's almost due south.
|
|
|
I drove to the UCSC / Wilder Ranch bike crossing under clear above-the-fog skies and got a ~1sec positive. Reductions to follow. Karl also prepared to go for it. Kirk had to work in the Central Valley and couldn't observe.
Richard Nolthenius
I set the Watec at max sharpness, max gain, Gamma=1, and the sky background looked clean. No vertical noise seen. Integration set at 8x. There was a lot of scintillation. I unplugged the monitor to preserve signal to the camcorder. There was scintillation; the fog layer began just a couple hundred feet below my elevation although it was completely clear where I was, on the Wilder Ranch bike path side. I thought I saw a ~1 second event, but on playback and PyMovie analysis, it was clear the star remained throughout; it was a miss. Strange, as I was on the centerline and the rank was high. Nominal odds of a miss were aboug 1%. I sent my IOTA report on May 22, along with the target light curve.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Karl observed from home, had good conditions but the ver=1 Watec was less sensitive and he opted for the 16x setting. I reduced his tape and he too had a miss, although his data was dimmer. 16x would give only 5 integrations for a maximum predicted occultation, but none of the light curve points reached to zero, nor was there any hint of an occultation that would meet any false positive test. I reported Karl's miss to IOTA on May 22.
 |
 |
 |