This event happens on Astro 8A night, in the middle of class. But the path misses Cabrillo Observatory. This is a good opportunity to have a short field trip to the area of Castelegno's which is on the centerline of the event.
My tentative plan is to place Jordan and half the students at a large open on the east side of Old SJ Rd across from the Masonic grounds. I'll then take the van and the rest of the students to just a few hundred yards north of Castelegno's, pulling out onto the open field there. If that's not practical and if the parking area for Castelegno's doesn't have a low enough horizon for the 37 degree high event, I'll retreat to Mtn Elementary School, just south of the centerline. Kirk plans to be close to the northern limit at the Eco Reserve in Bonny Doon.
Perhaps Karl will want to come down for this too? Olive Spring Rd at the small HQ in the large open field is a good spot I've used before. The azimuth of the event is 248, 22 degrees south of due west and it may be a problem with trees at the south entrance (gated) to the large open area and may not be suitable.
Alt=37, Az=243 in Canis Major, and the eyepiece view has a very bright 5.9 magnitude star which will help locate the field well. It's about 1/3 of the way from Procyon to Alhena (foot of Pollux).
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Jordan's site is a big wide empty siding on Old San Jose Rd, 1.2 miles north of the entrance to "Blue Ball Park". Use your iphone app called "compass", which also shows your longitude and latitude. Watching the latitude reading will guide you there. Avoid the trees hiding your target, which grow opposite the north half of the siding. |
I will plan to set up on the edge of the field a hundred yards north of the Castelegno's store further up the road. If that's not ideal, I may retreat to Mtn Elementary School a quarter mile back south.
In any case, let's all plan to meet at Castelegno's which has a big enough area to park our cars and we can review our data, and also use binoc's to do some variable star finding, before we turn you loose to get home for a late night snack.
Not tried by Karl or Bernard.
I set up at Mountain Elementary School; the gate was locked but there was plenty of room for my students to park, and the sky access horizons were good. Got on target OK. But the OccBox 14ah battery was dead. No data. I had Jordan set up near the 7th Day Adventist lot in a wide turnout. She had the same fatal issue; her OccBox battery had not been charged by her yet, and it read only 9.7v - not enough to power the camera and VTI. No data.
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I got a distinct 0.2 sec event for 2002 RA121, 2x at Bonny Doon eco reserve, April 28. There were scattered clouds, but clear in the target area.
NIE sigma distance = 4.1
magDrop report: percentDrop: 81.3 magDrop: 1.821 +/- 1.201 (0.95 ci)
DNR: 2.71
D time: [04:03:11.6646]
D: 0.6800 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0131} seconds
D: 0.9500 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0365} seconds
D: 0.9973 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0964} seconds
R time: [04:03:11.8648]
R: 0.6800 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0131} seconds
R: 0.9500 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0365} seconds
R: 0.9973 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0964} seconds
Duration (R - D): 0.2002 seconds
Duration: 0.6800 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0209} seconds
Duration: 0.9500 containment intervals: {+/- 0.0533} seconds
Duration: 0.9973 containment intervals: {+/- 0.1194} seconds
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