Occultation of TYC 0769-01093-1 by (585) Bilkis Sun. am, Nov. 11 - Updated 2007 Nov. 14, 19h UT
The path for this mid-weekend occultation crossed North America from Vancouver, BC to Chicago and Norfolk, Virginia
Dennis Rowley timed a 6.2s occultation from his home in Chesapeake, Virginia
Dennis observed the occultation visually using a 20cm SCT; his location was about 26 km north of the predicted center, only 4 km south of the predicted northern limit, so his relatively long event implies a significant north shift of the path. I confirmed that with two miss observations, a remote station at Stony Creek, VA about 13 km south of the predicted center, and an attended station at Skippers, VA, about 53 km south of center. I also ran a remote station at Cold Harbor, VA, about 50 km north of center, but even with a dew cap, some frost formed on the corrector plate during the two hours from when I removed a towel from the front end and started the video recorder there, until the event occurred. The 10th-mag. star 2' north of the target star is clearly visible drifting across the video field of view at the right time, but the target star can not be seen. Hopefully, processing with Registax can bring out the target star and determine the times of the occultation that probably occurred there (but that's not certain; I could be very unlucky with the 60-km-wide path passing entirely between my Stony Creek and Cold Harbor locations, which were 63 km apart relative to the path; also, the path could be narrower than predicted). Three other observers who planned to observe the occultation were clouded or fogged out. Prediction and planning information is here. David Dunham, 4 pm EDT Phone 301-526-5590 (cell) office (Blackberry) e-mail david.dunham@jhuapl.edu