(449) Hamburga Occultation Nov. 7 pm timed from 2 New England sites
Unfortunately, the two chords were too close together for an ellipse solution; Penn. miss report from just s. of path
Updated: 2005 Nov. 9, 0h UT
Marek Kozubal reports that he recorded a 9.4-second occultation at the Clay Center Observatory in the Boston area 13 km north of Steve Preston's predicted central line - see his message below. Scott Tracy visually timed an approximately 10-second occultation from North Granby, Conn. Tom Bash, at the town of Jim Thorpe in n.e. Pennsylvania, saw no occultation of the star; his site was 56 km south of the predicted center and only 1 km south of the southern limit. Since the positive durations were less than the 13.5-second expected central duration, the path may have shifted north (or else Bash would have had an occultation), but we can't be sure since the two positive chords are too close to tell. Thanks for the efforts of several others who tried, but were unable to obtain an observation, mostly due to the weather. My own case was especially frustrating, a story of defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. At 8 pm EST, more than 2.5 hours before the event, I was at a rural site a few miles northwest of Hazelton, PA, about 180 miles from home, on the 39 km south line that I wanted to cover with a remote station, and all the gear packed in my minivan, ready to set up. But the sky was almost overcast with thin cirrus, and was especially thick in the southwest; the Moon was really murky. The sky was dark enough and the cirrus thin enough that I could see the Water Jug in Aquarius, the key for finding 60 Aquarii to pre- point a remote telescope. But remembering the satellite loop, there were more cirrus moving in from the west, and I thought the murky Moon was a bad omen, that the whole area would be overrun with thicker cirrus that would surely wipe out the faint star. I called the national weather service to find out about what the weather was doing; they said that the clouds were quite thin towards the northeast, which I could see (the direction for my planned attended station n. of Scranton), but said that although there were breaks in the clouds, the situation across Pennsylvania was broken cirrus, not good odds for that star. So I decided to give up; if I left then, I could get home by midnight, and would be fresh for a meeting at work the next day (but I did not have much to do at that particular meeting). As Bash's observation showed, it did stay clear enough in that area and I should have deployed there as planned. Over an hour later, driving around Harrisburg, I noticed that the Moon looked much better, in spite of its altitude becoming quite low, and some stars looked rather sharp to the north and west, towards the path, which I was well south of there. I could see that the sky was improving, so I headed north on US 15 to get as close to the path as I could to try to get an observation. I finally had to stop a few miles north of Liverpool, PA, still several miles south of the southern limit, then half an hour before the event. The sky there was almost completely clear, just a few clouds very low on the horizon, and the Milky Way was bright. I got video going with one of my 8-inch SCT's, along with a Kiwi OSD for timing. A couple of minutes before the occultation, I located the 8th-mag. star in my finder scope, about a video field east of the target star; that star could not be seen in my finder at my more light-polluted home Sat. evening when I located the target star there. As I did then, I moved a video field to the right of the 8th-mag. star and found a star that I assumed was the 10.5-mag. star near the target. But it seemed fainter and I couldn't see the target in the viewfinder of my camcorder, which I assumed didn't show things as well as the 9-inch TV/VCR combo unit that I had used at home. There was no time for further checking, so I just recorded that star, and saw no event. But checking afterwards, I discovered that I had put the PC164C camera in the eyepiece holder upside down; always before, I had set it with north up in the video field. So for the observation, I had moved the wrong direction away from the 8th-mag. star! When I rotated the camera to the right direction, I easily found the 10.5- mag. star with the target star also visible in the viewfinder, but a few minutes too late! That's a mistake I won't make again. If there had been other stars close to the 8th-mag. star, in the same video field, I could have spotted that right away, but there were none in that sparse field. The last update of the extensive prediction and planning information is here. __________________________ From: Marek Kozubal [marek@portents.com] Sent: Tuesday, November 08, 2005 1:06 AM To: David Dunham Cc: breit_ideas@hotmail.com; Dunham, David; rdantowitz@dexter.org Subject: Re: Need help, Hamburga asteroid occ'n, Mon. pm, Boston to L.A. We have a definite positive occultation at Clay Center Observatory for 9.388 +/- 0.055 seconds from approx 03:39:26 to 03:39:35. Will produce and file a full IOTA form tomorrow. Our second location at the Middlesex School Observatory is unsure as we got a little time crunched, so we have to still double check some things before saying what the story is. -Marek __________________________ David Dunham e-mail home dunham@starpower.net; office david.dunham@jhuapl.edu