Yesterday I had no observing on my calendar, but the forecast for the evening was looking to be clear for a change.? There were no good events for my home observatory in either OW nor my own run of Occult.? There also were no "go mobile" events meeting my criteria of near 100% chance, brighter than mag 12, within 20 km, and with a safe possible observing site.? By the afternoon, while it was still 100% cloudy, both the forecast and the satellite images continued to look very promising.? I searched my Occult run again, and found an event that met all my criteria except the mag was only 12.5.? Zero probability for my home observatory, but the centerline was only 3 km south of here.? It was also at a very nice 9:20 PM event time.? I was skeptical that my C5/Astrid combination would be able to get good data on this event, but since it was predicted to be about 0.6 seconds, I could push the exposure time to 0.1 second.
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I was able to get permission to set-up at our county airport (Grand Canyon Regional--doesn't that have the possibility of causing confusion!) and the county visitor's center--which are less than a km apart.? Decided to put the C5/Astrid at the airport (further from the predicted centerline) and let it run unattended, and set-up my C9.25/Watec 910 at the visitor's center where I'd be.? I knew the C9.25 would be able to get the event, and setting up the Astrid isn't a big time effort if it didn't pan out.
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Astrid set-up as usual was trivial.? I was on the prepoint location in minutes.? My only worry was focus with the telescope cooling to the low 30's--but I did run a powered dew heater that would help some.? On to the second location, and found that I didn't leave quite enough time for the usual minor issues with setting up and getting on target.? With a bit of sweating, I was able to get on target with 3 minutes to spare.? The target appeared brighter than I expected, and I was able to use 4x (likely could have gone to 2x even)--but is was stunningly clear and the target high at 62 degrees elevation.? Watching live, I saw the blink about 5 seconds early (error in time was listed as 1 second in OW).??
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Packed up, went back to the airport.? Astrid indicated it was happy, but I powered down without looking at the video there.? Packed that up, and was home by 10:00.
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Great results!? The C9.25/Watec had a 0.72 second event with a 0.02 second 3-sigma (SNR 6.5).? The Astrid had a 0.80 second event with 0.10 second 3-sigma (SNR 3.7).? Astrid focus was very good.? The 0.2 second offset in time was in the direction I expected due to the almost 1 km difference along the path line between the two sites (but larger than would be accounted for by just that).
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Anyway, after 17 years of doing this, I finally have a double remote positive.? No way I could have done this (reasonably) without the Astrid.? I really need a second one to start doing some serious damage...
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Steve C
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Steve C