Folks:
1st, Congrats to Steve and Kevin on the Palisana hits!
Please pardon the length of this post, but I'm thinking some might enjoy a "story from the trenches"...
So... I was able to try for the (1200) event this morning at the unGodly hour of 4:17am (8:17UT). Had some high thin clouds but managed to get a usable video. A couple inches of snow on the ground here and an outside temp of 18dF (tho 60dF in the observatory's warm room). Didn't bother turning on the cooler for the QHY (the camera read a sensor temp of -11.2C = approx 12dF). Probability of the (1200) event said 93% (JPL-based prediction)... but... I had noticed that the shape model was quite elongated in the direction of the path, and I was somewhat close to the path edge. So it might be that my probability could be a bit lower. Well.....
?????? I recorded a Miss.
Considering the 'effort' in setting up and dealing with the cold I decided to look at my nightly Occult4 listing of events (for Nov 2) and see if there was anything promising coming up soon before I closed things down.
Occult4 listed an event (192851) at 5:01am (9:01UT) involving a 12.2 mag star. Probability said 13% chance. I decided to try for it. In short........ Another Miss.
Went back in the house and scanned the list again before closing up.........
Noticed an event (9977) at 5:36am (9:36UT) which was high up in Gemini. Decided to try for it - despite the Probability of this one being only 7% (I was on the 1-sigma line).
I didn't notice until I was printing the chart that the combined mag was 15.0, the Target Star was VERY close to another star, and it was only 8 degrees away from the 77% illuminated Moon(!!!).???? Decided to try anyway.
Nice thing about this one was the asteroid was very near its stationary point, thus it had a max duration of 9.2 seconds (and as a result, a JPL stated time uncertainty of +/-29 seconds). This helped - as I could run the QHY at a longer exposure. (BTW this was the coldest outside temp I have ever run my QHY).
It turned out that an exposure of 0.65 seconds gave me a fairly strong SNR, but it was VERY near a brighter star. (Later I examined the image and was able to make out stars to a bit fainter than mag 16.0 ! - see attached).
Anyway......... Damned if I didn't hit it !!! (see attached image).
A clear, very obvious, 8 data point positive, with a duration of 5.0 seconds (SNR=5.47).
It was a bit of a challenge to get PyMovie to "see" just the Target Star (and none of the closer brighter star), but an 11x11 Static aperture offset to one side did the trick.
I will be forwarding this video to Bob Anderson (and Tony George) to see what Bob might come up with as a better way to isolate a Target Star that is very close to another. (If anyone would like a link to this video, just ask. I'll forward the link when I have posted the video).
????? Woke at 3am... Back to bed at 6:30am. Gotta love it.
This is actually a common way I've hit Pos events. 20 minutes prior to this Pos I had no idea I would be trying for this event. Don't feel left out tho...... for all 3 events I went after, the paths all crossed over just northern NY - and none seemed to cross over anyone I know of on this list.
Happy Shadows,
George
George Viscome
