News from Redding South
Terrence R. Redding, Ph.D. RTN - March, 2010
Good morning all.
I am at the start of a very busy six weeks of both grazes and occultations. I routinely attempt three or four low probability events each month. Sadly, since my first introduction to occultations in Apple Valley, California with David Dunham, I have not had a positive.
This month I have seven shadows passing directly over Redding South and hope to produce more than one positive as I attempt as many of these events as possible.
This observation began when Occult Watcher (OW) listed this event with a green mark indicating that Redding South would be in the path of the shadow nearly 45 days ago. A quick review of the data displayed on OW indicated that this would be a difficult event.
Combined magnitude 11.8 m
Star magnitude 13.5 m
Magnitude drop 0.2 m
Moon distance 14 degrees
However, the rank of 99% and the shadow width of 103 miles meant this would be the highest ranked and largest asteroid to pass over Redding South in months. Though difficult, this event is still well within the reach of Redding South, if the sky conditions cooperated.
I announced my intent to observe the occultation with OW, and published the event on the February and then March web pages of the Astronomy Society of the Palm Beaches, http://www.palmbeachastro.org/TerrysPage.htm.
I then began watching my personal calendar to determine if I would be at home for the event and the weather forecast to see if the weather was expected to cooperate. I ran a few simulations with planetarium software to see how hard the asteroid and star would be to locate in the early morning sky. The moon near the asteroid in the sky meant that I would be able to quickly check scope alignment and a few bright stars near the event meant I would be ale to sync the field of view a few times quickly before the final slew to the event.
Yesterday, I made my final check of the weather and noted I had an iffy forecast. While the sky leading up to the event had been routinely clear, a warming trend for the Palm Beaches meant that additional low level moisture would be in the atmosphere. The forecast was for partly cloudy. The Clear Sky Chart for West Palm Beach showed average transparency for 4 AM and 5 AM, but poor at 6 AM. With the event scheduled for 5:45 AM, clearly the weather forecast was not good. Knowing that the clear weather window could easily shift an hour one way or the other, I decided to commit to a 4:30 wake-up and to make the effort.
I retired early, slept soundly and found myself waking before the alarm went off - always a good sign that I was clearly looking forward to the effort. Warm clothes - well clothes suitable for 60 degree weather - a cup of coffee, and I was on my way outside to unlock the observatory. The dogs remained quiet, the parrot Quasar tuned up with "fresh water" but I ignored her, knowing she would be quiet if I did not encourage her.
Outside it was cloudy, a thick haze actually, with the moon shining dimly through the haze. I unlocked the observatory, turned on the lights, checked the temperature 61 degrees, flipped the main power switch, turned on the radio to Coast to Coast, started the computers, and set about checking the final weather forecast in Clear Sky Chart. The extension of the WIFI to the observatory was a little iffy, but the weather forecast looked slightly better. I turned on the scope, pushed the dome back on the Skyshed POD, rotated it to place the open half towards the event, selected the moon, uncovered the scope, let the GPS acquire satellites, and then synced on the moon. As the scope slewed towards the moon I could see stars moving through the display on the computer monitor for the 70 mm finder scope, and in the FOV for the 14" scope - things were definitely looking up.
I verified the KIWI OSD GPS time insertion device was on, turned on the Canon Camera to record the event, noted the time date insertion was displaying properly and realized I had an hour to wait for the event. Always better to be early, than late for one of these events. Too often I have found myself able to record an event - one minute after it occurred. Not good. But this morning things were looking good.
I started updating software and checking e-mail - ultimately deciding to start writing this report and share this experience. I checked Starry Night Pro Plus 6, Voyager 4.5 and The Sky X Serious Astronomy Edition (TSXSAE) to see how easy it would be to display the asteroid location. I prefer the user interface of the other Mac programs. However, TSXSAE provides the easiest way to update the elements for accurately portraying the asteroid's current location and has very good scope control for the LX200R. So for serious work, I often end up using the Bisque program.
While typing this report I noted the moon fading from view as the clouds thickened. By 30 minutes before the event it was looking worse yet. Ultimately the event was unobserved. With OW it is easy to file your Positive, Negative, or Unobserved report. I use a PC in the observatory to file the report. I right click on the green indicator and receive a pull-down menu, which allows me to file an observation report. My coordinated observation station is automatically entered by the software with the station name, offset distance and report status. It contains another set of pull-down menus that let you report a Miss, a Positive, Report to follow, or No observation. If you select No observation, another pull-down menu appears that allows you to make a comment, or select a pre-written comment of "Clouded out" or "Technical failure." I chose "Clouded out."
My next planned event is when (171) Ophelia occults 2UCAC 39978571 on Saturday, March 13 at 01:55 AM local time. Until then.
Terry - W6LMJ
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