My Video Observation of the 2002 Dec. 24 (334) Chicago Occultation

New: 2003 Feb. 21

   Another almost remote success was the December 24th occultation by
(334) Chicago, and my observation of that event was due actually to
the success of the approach described here. I set up a C-5 among
some trees just north of a park-and-ride lot at an intersection with
US1 west of Oxford, Pennsylvania.  I aimed it at a "guide" star in
Gemini a little more than an hour before the event, to set the
telescope at the alt. and az. that the 8.5-mag. target star would
have at the time of the occultation.  I then went to another site
at Cochraneville about 7 miles farther north and set up a C-8 at the
edge of a field beside a municipal building that was unoccupied at
that hour, about 3 am local time.  But I had a little bit of
difficulty with alignment and seeing fainter stars in the finder
scope with a rather bright Moon nearby; I could tell that I might
not get on the target star before the occultation, less than half an
hour away now, and I had not started the video recording at the
remote site.  So I decided to abandon the C-8 and go back to the
C-5, and start the video there, which I did a few minutes before the
occultation.  There was not time to go back to the other telescope,
or to try to locate the target star directly with the C-5; I just
kept it in place, hoping that it was pointed correctly.  But I had
trouble with time signal reception.  I looked at the monitor about
half a minute before the occultation and saw two stars of about
equal brightness in the field of view, which I didn't expect.  I
concentrated for several seconds on getting better time signals, so
I didn't see the occultation when it occurred, and thought
afterwards that I might not have been successful.  A few minutes
later, I finally recorded some good WWV time signals, and then had
to pack up the equipment and both telescopes, and head for home to
meet my family and go to the airport for our Christmas family
reunion trip.  With the rush of other things, it was about a month
before I got a chance to carefully review that tape and see that I
had actually recorded the occultation by Chicago.  In a few days, I
plan to refine those times.

      In short, the basic technique for making remote recordings with
stationary telescopes has been proven, and should work even for
fairly faint stars.  But lots of time, it seems always more than one
might think, is needed to make this work in practical field
situations.

David Dunham