The Occultation of an 11.9 Star by Astrid

June 24, 2023 at 2:45am

 

This is a high rank event, with high odds of a success from Carrizo Plain. I and Kirk Bender plan to drive to Carrizo to get this, and 1 or 2 other asteroid events this same night. The altitude is 25 degrees at Carrizo Plain, Az=209 in the SSW

The star will drop by 2.2 magnitude for up to 3.9 seconds. We're north of the centerline and the northern limit is just north of Soda Lake, so that to keep our odds comfortably high and still be able to camp in Carrizo, we'll want to keep Kirk at the usual campsite, and I will drive to the ridge top to get a second chord. To get closer to the centerline would otherwise require driving all the way down to Soda Road and driving south down the valley. At 2:45am, this will be too exhasting in light of our heavy trail running plans a few hours later... and the road turns washboard not far south of the intersection with Caliente Ridge Rd, on my poor 26 year old RAV4, that's not what I'd like to do.

   

 

Results:

Kirk and I were at Carrizo Plain for this. Kirk observed from our usual Carrizo Campsite on Caliente Ridge Rd. I drove up to the top of the ridge and the campsite at the far south end of the ridge road, to observe. The odds of a positive were about 91% for both sides, and indeed, we got the occultation.

Richard Nolthenius

I watched the occultation on the flip-out screen on the LCD, and it looked to be about 3.5 sec, which was in agreement with Kirk just a few miles north of me. However, it seems the tape heads were dirty(?) or the battery charge was too low (it did not look so on the battery icon), but in any case, the signal did not get recorded on the DV tape. An IOTA report was still done, and sent in on 6/27/23

         
         

 

Kirk Bender

Kirk got good data from his site, at our campsite.