This is a new event just announced on the message board by David H. The error ellipse is still large and makes an expedition unlikely to be worth doing, except perhaps for getting above local fog. Hopefully in coming days the prediction will be refined. It's clear however that this event is exclusively favoring the west coast and only the west coast of North America.
Since the path is not that firm, I'd recommend we not worry about trying to spread out - the KBO is very big. It's more important that we be close enough to re-enforce whatever our noisy light curves conclude by hopefully agreeing with each other within good tolerances. It's almost 2am, a tough time, but I will try to get into darker skies than home, which is very light-polluted, so I can use longer integrations. Twin Gates would be my first choice.
Here is the latest from Sam Deen, who first identified this occcultation from his new observations:
I was the person who helped get this TNO confirmed, and have several unpublished observations of it that refine the orbit significantly. My observations' + the published observations resultant orbit predict a somewhat confident northward shift where the TNO will nominally pass over the pacific northwest up to Alaska, although I don't want to discourage more southerly observers from Arizona and southern California from trying to observe it too as the star has a somewhat high RUWE just below 1.4. Also, the TNO's colors and my personal colorimetry imply it nominally has a larger diameter of closer to 500 km instead of 350 km, so you should expect a longer event that passes over a broader area than is detailed here- even larger than the blue lines indicate.
So this looks to be less likely for us here in California. Maybe best to stay home and give it a try if it looks clear, but I'm less inclined to try to drive anywhere for a 2am event when I have other responsibilities too, and the weather looks so bad.
RUWE = 1.35, not ideal but not terrrible.
Alt=19 Az=209 at time = 30min before the event, when you should be ID'ing the target
Target is a UCAC4 star on the outskirts of IC 4685 Open Cluster in Sagittarius, just 1 degree upper left of the Lagoon Nebula.
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I was ready to drive up to BD for this one, but the clouds just wouldn't give a good signal. That, and the last communique by the ephemeris people expressed confidence the path would be in the Pacific Northwest, not central CA. No, no data from me. I doubt there will be data from Karl or Bernard, and Kirk was not able to attempt due to work.