June 8th Double Hitter near Tonopah, Nevada

New: 2003 June 13

Jim Stoffaire, from Bishop, California, became the third person to 
see two asteroidal occultations in one night on June 8th.  He wrote:

To: IOTAoccultations@yahoogroups.com
From: "Jim Stoffaire" 
Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2003 16:43:23 -0000
Subject: [IOTAoccultations] Double header

NAD27 Datum
Latitude 38 deg 07 min 25 sec N
Longitude 117 deg 18 min 23 sec W
Elevation 5373 ft. asl

Arrived under heavy cloud cover at a site NW of Tonapah, Nevada.
179 Klytamnestra's target star TYC 7401-02148-1 was totally obsured 
by high clouds until 30 minutes before the event. Using the GOTO 
function I centered 75 Vir and could just barely see the target star 
7' away but appeared very dim through the thin sheet of cirrus 
clouds. At appox 7:28:56 UTC it dropped from sight. At 7:29:11 UTC 
it reappeared. For me this was a difficult observation since the 
thin cloud cover badly attenuated the star. At one point I thought 
it had disappeared due to the occultation but it had only faded due 
to atmospherics, only to reappear the next second. 

Four hours later it was 390 Alma's turn. Most of the clouds had 
cleared out and by 11:00 UT Sagittarius and the Milky Way were well 
seen in the southern sky. At 11:20:57 UT the target star disappeared 
and reappeared at 11:21:02. I have no doubt about this one as the 
target star shone like a beacon throught the 18mm eyepiece and was 
easily observed. I have one audio tape recordings of Klytamnestra 
and two audio taper recordings of Alma along with a night vision 
camcorder video of me yelling out the times during both events. I 
now need to work on getting the video cameras to properly record 
future events through the telescope. 

Farther south, marine clouds filled the Los Angeles basin and 
surrounding valleys, but it remained clear in the mountains just to 
the north.  At Running Springs, essentially on the predicted eastern 
edge of the path, Bob Jones videorecorded only a 1-second 
occultation by Klytaemnestra, showing that Preston's path prediction 
was extremely accurate.  Successively farther west, Jim and Karen 
Young timed the occultation from separate sites at Wrightwood, and 
Steve Edberg recorded the occultation from the Angeles Crest Highway 
north of La Canada. 

Richard Nolthenius observed at the s. limit of the Alma occultation, 
while Walter Morgan and others observed north of the path, all 
having no occultation.  So Alma's shadow apparently shifted a small 
distance to the north, enough to cause Nolthenius' miss but not 
enough for the shadow to reach Walter.

On 1999 January 17, Takuo Kojima became the first person to see two 
occultations in one night, from his observatory in Japan.  First, 
(510) Mabella occulted 9.8-mag. SAO 117797, then (820) Adriana 
occulted 5.7-mag. SAO 119508.  Richard Nugent became the second to 
accomplish this on January 2nd this year, from a site near Jai, New 
Mexico for occultations by (44) Nysa and (196) Philomela.  Read more 
about this here.