This is a low rank event, but bright star, just south of King City. However, the altitude is low. Only 13 degrees in Auriga rising low in the Notheast. Need a dark direction there. New moon and far enough from King City that the skies should be OK as long as the cloud cover is OK. Odds on centerline only 28%, but decent odds that if we straddle as we plan, that one of us should or may get it. Only 0.5sec long, so have to keep integration short. It will look 1.0 magnitudes dimmer than if overhead, so 10.7 will look 11.7. But 11.7 is still bright enough and easy to get at 4x, which should show the event OK.
I've chosen sites so Kirk would be farther north of the centerline, and I would be south, We'll want to pack up and get on the road, to Paso Robles and dinner, before heading to our second event on Hwy 58 at the south end of Shell Creek Rd.
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The star rose in the low east, through a sharply defined bank of cirrus which was moving east. The target star was clear of cirrus before recording of the event. I did see a drop out during the recording. I set up at the Wildhorse Cafe turnoff, up Wildhorse road, 55ft from the centerline of Wildhorse Rd, on a dirt ag access, on the south side.
I used 4x setting, sharpness=4, gain=41, gamma=1.0. In PyMovie I used the Fourier finder to set TME apertures on all stars, and a 4 pixel no-star aperture. I used ref2 as the reference star, slightly brighter than the target and very close, to hopefully make synchronous with any possible lingering cirrus clouds, which cleared from the target only a few minutes before the event. The light curves below do not show any cirrus evidence. Note the brightest star was heavily saturated (used for tracking) and this accounts for the unusual light curve of that star; not used in calibrations, only for tracking. The event below cleared the red-bar test, and occurred at the predicted 2:25:51 UT time of the event. The predicted duration for maximum was only 0.5 second, so a 0.38 second event is reasonable to expect.
Lat: 36 11' 39.32"
long: 121 03' 45.62"
Elev: 419 ft
magDrop report: percentDrop: 88.4 magDrop: 2.339 +/- 0.387 (0.95 ci)
DNR: 5.05
D time: [02:25:51.4481]
D: 0.6800 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0100} seconds
D: 0.9500 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0240} seconds
D: 0.9973 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0453} seconds
R time: [02:25:51.8351]
R: 0.6800 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0100} seconds
R: 0.9500 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0240} seconds
R: 0.9973 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0453} seconds
Duration (R - D): 0.3870 seconds
Duration: 0.6800 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0144} seconds
Duration: 0.9500 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0319} seconds
Duration: 0.9973 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0571} seconds
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Set up on Loneoak Rd off First Street at south end of King City. For reasons not yet understood, the camcorder failed to record the data stream. Star was too dim to follow adequately to judge whether there was an event, live. No data.