This is bright(ish) star with a long 1.0s duration, at high altitude but not too high, and parallels Highland Way/Summit. Karl's place is very close to the centerline. We can get good coverage of the path by leaving Karl at home, then setting up at Radonich Ranch and nearby. However, my early hope for a social night at Karl's won't work; hopefully Karl can sneak out after his dinner w/ friends at home, and get this. I'll instead focus on the brighter nearby event by 2001 XY26 at 8:30pm. Tons of work still to do at home anyway.
Alt=66, Az=202 about 8 degrees to the upper right of Regulus
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It was clear and I needed to get away from the computer for a couple of hours; and Kirk joined me, driving up Hwy 17 to set up a couple of sites on either side of Karl's track. Karl observed from home, but the sparse star field made it tough to ID the star patterns, and he did not that solved in time. I set Kirk up on Laurel Drive, about a half mile from it's intersection with Hwy 17. I drove further north, to the "Wedding Chapel" entrance gate. We both got recordings. We were about 1/2 asteroid radius apart.
Richard Nolthenius
I set up at the gate to the "Wedding Chapel" on Hwy 17 near Glenwood drive. I used 4x. Clear, as far as I could visually tell. I disconnected the monitor and watched the event on the flip out screen, but could not tell if there was any event. There was some breeze and may have affected the light curve at some moments. However, by watching frame by frame in PyMOvie around the predicted time, I could verify that there was no event, let alone an event of about 1.0 sec long (1.0s would be 25 frames or 12 integrations, 12 points along the zero point. I instead saw 3 brief 1-integration points which were clearly deep but still not zero, and they were widely spaced apart and have no reason to believe they were therefore real. Most likely moments of poor tracking perhaps due to the breeze. I reduced using TME apertures snap-to-center. No event at any times near the prediction. Looks like a convincing miss.
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Brief wind(?) events, but too many and not close enough to event time to raise suspicion of being real. |
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At the gate (locked) to the Wedding Chapel. |
my gear, in action. |
At Kirk's site. |
Set up on Laurel Drive, at a quiet spot with a clear view of Leo.
I didn't get a clear event for 1032 T-2, 1x from Laurel road. Zooming in, there is a rough dip near predicted time of 5:52:16, but if I have pyote look for an event, it finds a 0.18 sec event at 5:52:53, 37 sec after predicted. However, the tracking star dips at this time too. I did do smoothing but target still roughly dipped. If I trim to 15 sec before and after predicted, it finds an event at at 5:52:05, 11 sec before predicted, with low 0.5 sigma NIE. If I trim further to 5 sec around predicted time, it finds a dip at 05:52:16.5499, but very short at 0.0834 sec with a low 1.2 sigma NIE test. So looks like just noise and a miss unless I trim very selectively, and unless you have a positive I can corroborate with. I wasn't far from centerline and predicted max was almost a second so prediction could have been off.
RN: We had wind this night. I had a vehicle to help shield me, and so had not much trouble. Kirk was out in the open, although in an area of trees and steep ground which also helped with wind. I see very short dips scattered in both of our light curves which I suspect were brief vibrations from tracking. The star was bright and the predicted duration was long, and although it's not impossible there could be a brief 1 or 2 integration drop, the odds that a positive would be that short is very low. If real, they should drop to zero. I'm convinced I had a miss, but I was 1/2 asteroid radius north of Kirk and so my miss doesn't raise the odds of a miss for Kirk very much. However, given the breeze, I think it's safest to simply call both of our observations misses and then let the commentary stand on its own. If at some distant time when there's a rock solid orbit for this object and it become highly likely that Kirk must have had a grazing event, then so be it. But that outcome too, is very unlikely.
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