This very bright event happens high in the sky, just a degree below Hamal, which is a 8SE alignment star too. Brightest star in Aries. The path is through Watsonville with clear weather forecast. I will be teaching this night at Cabrillo, and then working on my Astro 8A lab book and then head off to get the event on San Andreas Rd or Buena Vista Rd
Alt=68, Az=126 just a degree below Hamal, which should be used as an align star to insure good targeting.
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I set up on San Andreas Rd, about a mile from Kirk Bender who set up on Beach St/San Andreas. However, the mount was pointing very poorly and I could not get on-target in time. The mount had been able to get on Torifune 2 days earlier, but now I could hear rocks inside the mount arm, from the fall it took the week before. I tried several re-align's and it just would not point accurately, being off by more than a couple of degrees when trying to go to test targets.
Set up on Beach St and San Andreas. Got a recording A miss for 2000 EA92, 1x at San Andreas rd and Beach st in Watsonville. Bright star, but no dips. I set gain at 21 dB to avoid saturation.
There were no other stars available for reference or tracking. A little more than halfway from the centerline to southern path boundary but still a miss.
Pyote detectability tool reported an event as short as 0.02s would be detectable, predicted max was 0.34s.