1992AJ

The Occultation of a W=10.9 Star by Asteroid 1992 AJ

Oct 31, 2023 at 7:18:09pm

This is a bright, high confidence event going right through Santa Cruz and the Santa Cruz Mountains at a convenient time. It's right at the beginning of Astro 8A so I'll be trying it from Cabrillo College, but it's inside the path in Santa Cruz and at Karl's as well.

The Alt=24 and Az=224 in eastern Serpens near the base of the 'snake'. I will plan to observe from the water tank road on the hill above Cabrillo.

The duration is only 0.6 seconds, though. So I would advise doing this in field mode when we analyze, and set integration to a minimum. But don't throw away light by doing "EI" or shorten the exposures.

Results:

Richard Nolthenius

My 14ah battery had been inadvertantly left on since last use a couple of days ago. Enough power to light the red lights on the male 12v plugs, but not enough to power the equipment. I tried patching in a substitute to my car adapter, but that did not power it either; likely a small mismatch in the barrell plug inner diameter? Anyway, no data. I observed from the water tank road near Horticulture at Cabrillo College.

Kirk Bender (PyOTE log file)

For 1992AJ I got a .4337 sec event at 2x from the berm on Empire Grade. Data attached. Event about 1 sec later than predicted. Area looked clear of clouds. Rather noisy light curve but easily passed the false positive test with small error bars. 1x looked too dim, even 2x was dim, I could have gone 4x but then would have got fewer event points. A small snafu, I forgot my table but used the scope boxes instead. Also there was a brief video glitch in the recording and I got a few bad luckily after the event, so I trimmed it out for pyote. I saw the glitch live while recording so it wasn't the tape playback, but regardless I'll clean the camcorder for the next event. I had already switched to a fresh tape for the previous event Solanta.

magDrop report: percentDrop: 80.2 magDrop: 1.760 +/- 0.538 (0.95 ci)

DNR: 2.38

D time: [02:18:09.1932]

D: 0.6800 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0130} seconds

D: 0.9500 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0372} seconds

D: 0.9973 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0994} seconds

R time: [02:18:09.6269]

R: 0.6800 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0130} seconds

R: 0.9500 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0372} seconds

R: 0.9973 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0994} seconds

Duration (R - D): 0.4337 seconds

Duration: 0.6800 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0192} seconds