Occultation by (976) Benjamina Observed in Washington State - New 2007 April 12, 2h UT

Chad Ellington's 7-second event at Kent, WA was 141 km s. of the predicted central line, about like Thornburg s. of Fredericksburg, VA

From: David Dunham [dunham@starpower.net]
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 2:19 AM
To: Dunham, David
Subject: Last night's Benjamina occultation path crossed northern
Virginia & s. Maryland

Message to Chad Ellington, who timed an approximately 7-second 
occultation by the asteroid Benjamina from his home in Kent, 
Washington State, last night: 

Chad,

     Thanks for this, but it makes me sad because I missed a chance 
to record two asteroidal occultations in one night.  It just 
underscores what I've said before, that if you are within the 1-
sigma uncertainty zone of an occultation, you should try to observe, 
no matter what.  Your location at Kent, WA, 141 km s. of the 
predicted center was about 10 km s. of Fredericksburg, VA on my side 
of the country, and I drove through that area a little more than an 
hour before the Benjamina occultation.  I could have stopped at the 
Stafford airport, a nice fairly dark area about 10 km north of 
Fredericksburg and could have recorded a good chord to supplement 
yours.  The predicted path was about 100 km wide, and if your 
location was near the center, which your long duration implies, then 
the northern limit should have been at about -90 km, which would 
have been near Woodbridge and Nokesville, VA, and Hughesville, MD. 
The southern limit would have been at about -190 km, near Greenbank, 
WV; and Charlottesville and Ashland, VA. 

     Too bad it didn't clear up earlier at your site, or you could 
have observed the Iris occultation, too [actually, no, it was 
before sunset there].  Unfortunately, as far as I know now, I was 
the only one to observe it [click here for my account of the Iris 
event]; it would have been much better if for either the Iris or 
Benjamina occultations (and preferably for both), we had had at 
least two stations observing the occultation.  So it's unfortunate 
that the weather didn't look good enough for me to leave before rush 
hour, in which case I could have set up two stations for Iris. 

David

At 11:56 AM 4/10/2007, you wrote:
>Yep...so glad the clouds parted for a change. Able to see the clearing 
>coming in from the West which held for a couple hours. Looks like my 
>home was about 141km S of the predicted centerline (still 23km within 
>one sigma though). Hopefully I wasn't the only one with the 
>clearing...Steve's chord was only some 30km N of my place.
>Still working on the video...getting lots of good suggestions.
>Chad

David Dunham