This event goes through Twin Gates and then SE from there. Kirk planned to get it from Twin Gates. The altitude was high, and the post-cold front clearing made for good skies. The rank was poor, however, and so even though I was south of the path, I decided it would be valuable to give it a try, once I learned of it.
Alt=61, Az-82 in Auriga, 10deg left of El Nath
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Kirk got a positive from Twin Gates, Bernard got a recording from Carbonera, and I got a recording which looked like a miss, from my my carport.
I was quite pre-occupied this night, and did not sign up for this event. At 10:52pm I glanced at my email and saw a note from Kirk Bender about this event. The event was just 41 minutes away. All my gear was packed away in my living room. I had no charts nor planning page prepared. Was there time to pull all that together? Would I be able to have enough uninterrupted time away from my medical prep, to get this? It seemed unlikely, but I thought the challenge was worth a go. I made a planning page in record time, dragged my gear to my car, realizing I'd be able to get it from just pulling my car 10 feet out of the carport. Everything happened without a hitch, except for the most worrying part - my damaged scope does not GoTo point as accurately as it used to. Still, I was able to ID the star field after less than a minute of searching the vicinity. It was about 1 degree away from the pointed GoTo. The power-up of all gear went quick, and I was on-target with 5 minutes to spare. I got a recording at 8x. I probably should have used 4x, as the star was pretty easy to see at 8x. The rank was not great, so there was value in trying it even outside the 1-sigma limits.
My data looks good. A miss from home. A full duration event would be 4 integrations. No hint of any partial nor full drop points in the area of the predicted event time.
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