This event has the gift of being nice and long - 12 seconds! But, the curse of being only a 0.3 drop in V, and 0.4 in R. In R, the target star is 13.9, which means from past experience the drop will be more like 0.35 mag. The asteroid is 13.5 magnitude and the combined image is listed at 13.2 or maybe 13.1 in R or Watec band. I think 16x might see it, and 32x would very likely show it, and that's still 1/2 sec time resolution, which for a 12s event is decent. We're near the southern limit and odds are only 50%, and our duration is more likely to be more like a few seconds up to 8 seconds, I'd guess. Still, 32x might work. Fog will have to hold off, which is iffy. Easily above my local horizon from the carport.
The southern limit almost hits West Cliff. Odds are 55% of a hit for Kirk and I.
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Kirk and I lucked out, and both got long ~11 second events. Karl was leaving for a long trip and couldn't do it.
I observed from the east side of Empire Grade at the bike path crossing at Upper Meadow UCSC. I used 16x as my setting. Lucky that the event was long duration to make the drop clearer. No fog, we were above it.
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Target light curve in gold, event is centered. Nice to have such a dim star, and so close to a gibbous moon, gave such a clear positive. I used to think 14th magnitude stars were ~impossible, but care and improved coding from PyMovie/PyOTE has changed that. |
Target light curve |
Reference star, brightest I could find that didn't have saturated pixels. |
In the end, I chose to use the very similar brightness, very close neighbor to Fringilla as the reference star. |
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Clear skies. |
The waning moon was rising in the East. |
A 12.4 second duration, which is close to the 11.74s event seen by Kirk Bender.
Kirk observed from "the Berm" pull out on Empire Grade.
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