1993LF

The Occultation of a R=12.2 Star by Asteroid 1992LF

Mar 24, 2024 at 9:23pm

This is a nominally high rank event whose souther limit just clips the northern outskirts of Santa Cruz, mainly through the southern slopes of the SC Mtns. It's likely a miss from Karl and also from Kirk and my homes. It requires just a few miles travel to get inside the path. Duration is 0.6s which is long enough that a 4x or eve 8x (not recommended) integration should get it.

owcloud predictions

Alt=58, Az=258 in Gemini, just a degree below Eta Geminorum; the foot of Pollux. In fact, Eta Geminorum is just barely outside the upper right side of the eyepiece field when centered on the target

Results

I recorded at the bike path crossing east side upper meadow UCSC, but the switch on my VTI chose then to stop working, and it was frozen on the 'position' toggle, with too many numbers clogging the screen. I couldn't see the Watec info and think I was on 2x, and tried to get the target into a less clutered spot. Not examined yet, but probably no data. Kirk observed and got a recording at "the Berm". Karl was not in the path. This was a rush; as I waited till late before finally deciding not to try Eurybates this night, and only noticing this event in time to rush off charts and notify Kirk and get up to the bike path.

Richard Nolthenius

My IOTA VTI v3 froze in the "position" switch, so I had to try to get a recording with both the Watec menu up on screen and also all the letters and numbers from the position information. I had to maneuver the target star into the lower right part of the chip where there was no lettering, and it looks like the integration setting was at 2x. The target was almost not visible, but I did find it by stepping through many frames and seeing it on most frames enough to be sure that was it, and was in the correct star pattern position.

Frame #667 was when the UTC on the position screen first turned over to 4:23:16. At 30 frames per second, if that really was at 16.00 seconds, and if the event was centered at 14.75 says Kirk, that's 31 frames earlier than 667 or frame=636. Is that showing a dip?

I think the best my data can say, is a suggestion of a low S/N at the right time, and weak confirmation of Kirk's positive, but not enough to pass any FP tests for me.