This event is good ranked, has several other observers, is bright, and decently high in the sky in the early evening. It could promise a good shape mapping of Junichi as well as precise orbit astrometry. And a good search for any moons as well. Worth doing.
The path however requires driving. Karl has a chance if he stays home; better if he drives north (might be a good time to go visit Tom!). For acceptable high odds, I'd want to drive into Silicon Valley but not make a longer drive than necessary. There's a good spot at the parking lot on Vasona Lake. The target azimuth is directly down the street paralleling Hwy 17 which is elevated well above the access drive along the lake to the parking spot. This parking lot is a service lot to the Parks and Rec admin center, not into the park (gated past this parking lot). I don't see any gates blocking access to this parking lot. However, south of here is the main Vasona Park and that has a fee entrance gate which closes at 7pm. So we can't use the Park.
The target is reddish, with a V-R of 1.2, V=11.3, R=10.1 giving a Watec W=10.7. Other SiValley observers are Liu and Osaki, and it passes through Az too, with Paul Maley so far also on the list.
iPhone says 32min from home to SC Parks/Rec this Sunday morning, probably more like 40min. To get there at 8pm,1 hr ahead of event, have to leave here at 7:20pm. Station sort says odds of a hit for me and Kirk is 71%, for Karl 39%. 92% near centerline at SJAirport, but crummy choice of any sites.
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Houge Park option. This is what we settled on.
Houge Park. Not sure where SJAA Star Parties are held. I see a lot of trees and not sure where the streetlights are inside the park, nor whether the park is open when no star party. |
Tough to find a place that doesn't look into a streetlight nor a tree. This corner looks OK. |
I had a successful ~1s event from 200 ft south of Woodward along Twilight. Lat=37 15' 34.94" Long=121 56' 34.71" elev = 292'. I recorded at 2x
magDrop report: percentDrop: 88.8 magDrop: 2.381 +/- 0.385 (0.95 ci)
DNR: 3.98
D time: [03:53:33.0490]
D: 0.6800 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0069} seconds
D: 0.9500 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0182} seconds
D: 0.9973 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0355} seconds
R time: [03:53:34.1888]
R: 0.6800 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0069} seconds
R: 0.9500 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0182} seconds
R: 0.9973 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0355} seconds
Duration (R - D): 1.1398 seconds
Duration: 0.6800 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0104} seconds
Duration: 0.9500 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0235} seconds
Duration: 0.9973 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0428} seconds
Oscillations in the light curves of unknown origin. There is some correlation between stars, but not at all perfect. |
I made a Fourier finder and then used TME snap-to apertures for two tracking stars and for the target. I tried ref2 for a reference but it was noisier than using ref1 for a reference. |
Fortunately, the occultation event was deep and happened during a quiet period in these oscillations |
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The false positive histogram was quite solid. |
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Zoomed in, the light curve looks solid, at 2x. Could possibly re-do with Fresnel diffraction included, seeing the high pixels just before D and after R? But timing errors are not done in PyOTE for this selection, so I'll skip. |
Successfully recorded from the south border of Hough Park, along Mystic Ave. Recorded at 2x
Kirk was only less than a mile from me, but his light curves look free of any oscillations. So, high clouds would seem hard to explain it. Perhaps he used static circular apertures? |
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