All,
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I had been planning to run three stations for this event last night.? Bob D out in Illinois was also on the path. The original plan was to set-up at home with my observatory and two Astrid C-5 remote stations.? One was intended to be at our local airport and the other at Cherry Spring State Park (the airport is on the way to CSSP).? This would have given a good spread, with the airport and CSSP bridging Bob's home station.
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When I looked at it again yesterday afternoon, I realized that there was not enough time after sunset to set-up all three and do the driving in between.? I cancelled CSSP and inserted another station about halfway between the airport and Bob's line.? That would only involve a less than 5 minute drive instead of a 35 minutes one.
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My go-to forecasts said mostly clear skies, although some others were not as good.? At sunset, the skies were mostly cloudy (who'd think it!).? I sat in my observatory waiting for enough clearing and darkness to allow me to punch through--this took until about 9:30 local time (event was at 10:52).? Because of a potential meridian flip, I opted to prepoint the C14 and just did the math to make sure I'd be on field at the right time (once again, math worked).? I was out of the observatory at 9:45 and on the road.
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When I got to the airport site, it was 100% clouds to the south, but a lot of clearing was visible to the west (where twilight was still very visible).? I set the Astrid/C-5 up and waited for the clear area to get there.? This happened about 15 minutes before event time.? I debated trying to run for the third station, but that's when I tend to break things (unintentionally)--so I punted and stayed put.? It was clear for the event there, and I was able to see the ~0.9 second blink live and in-person.
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When I got home, I checked the observatory, and found it was in/out of high clouds at event time.? But the large aperture won out, and there was a very clean ~1.0 second blink there as well.
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The two stations were about 1.4 km apart on the path, but the shorter event was predicted to be closer to center.? If I knew there would only be two chords and had the time, I would have increased the distance between them.
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Multi-stations are becoming less challenging as I do it more--for good events like this one, I'm going to routinely try for three assuming it runs close to my observatory.? FYI, my Astrid/C-5's can get to about mag 12.3 for clear skies and moderate elevation angle--at 10 Hz, this was 11.7.
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Steve C
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Steve C