This is a bright event, but at low altitude of only 9 degrees in the east. Will have to get on target late. Weather is perfect, though. 2.3 sec duration, full drop. Gibbous moon 57 deg away, in the SE.
|
|
|
... not good! I thought this would be easy, with good weather and a 9.9 mag star. The altitude and the mediocre rank and long drive had me feeling it important to be as close to the centerline as I could get, and stay away from another chord set. That meant there was only one place to set up, and it was on the north side of the new Pacifica tunnel, but it turned out to mean looking straight into intense headlights from Hwy 1. I took a good 20 minutes positioning and orienting the RAV4 exactly right to allow the target area to be visible and to have my rear door be able to hide the oncoming light. I had to wedge some shopping bags and duct tape on the rear window, and then drape the roll-up table too, to block all the lights. There was some eclpsing of the incoming beam until pretty close to the event and this added to making it tough to ID the star field. Seeing was terrible at sub 9 degrees altitude - and I never did ID the proper field. I did send it to M42 and Jupiter and in both cases the targets were on the lower left edge of the eyepiece field, and I tried to include that in my attempt to ID the field, but still it failed. The 9.9 star, under 9 degree extinction, would look like an 11.7 star, which is just on the ragged edge of eyeball at the eyepiece visibility normally, but with the near full moon, and looking over the NE towards SF and the East Bay lights over the hill, the target star was not visible, let alone the dimmer stars.
The other problem was, I had a sleep-deprived stressed morning and only found this event after late morning looking, and I got rushed trying to turn this into a little adventure get-away; a trail run to the top of Montara Mountain, then dinner at Moss Beach's El Gran Amigo restaurant, then get the occultation. I packed my Camelbak, and positioned my camcorder bag.... and then drove off without both of them! I realized before getting to Davenport I'd left my CamelBak, and felt I could still get 'er done... but it didn't occur to me I'd left the camcorder bag. My solution at event time, was to make a video with my iPhone and audio record a shouted "D!" and "R!" and then video my digital watch (maybe I should permamently keep a WWV radio in the car??), and compare the rate and calibration with the GPS time after getting home. But the field ID problem made that moot.
The trail run, sunset, and dinner all went very nicely. This, despite another big tragedy; a fatal head-on crash and fire on Hwy 1 about 10 minutes up ahead of me before getting to Half Moon Bay. Frozen traffic, and I had to backtrack and go through Stage Rd, La Honda to Hwy 35, to Hwy 92 and back to Half Moon Bay.
 |
