patientia 451 mov file. Video clip of the asteroid occultation Patientia 451 taken at the Jack C. Davis Observatory by RECON JCDO/Carson members Ron Bardarson, Jim Bean, and Rick Cooley

The day of the Patientia occultation dawned completely overcast here in Yerington and remained so the whole day, putting the event viewing in jeopardy. But we went ahead with our plans and gathered at the appointed time. The astronomy gods were with us because the sky turned out crystal clear.

Scott, Todd, Red and Robert working through the setup of the new telescope.

Red Sumner and Robert Collier drove over from Carson City to walk us through the whole process and their help was invaluable. They are two very knowledgeable men. We had decided to meet at the football field at Yerington High School because we would have access to power and transporting the telescope would not be an issue. With Red’s help the scope was up and running in no time.

Red getting a feel for the controller.

The scopes first light was Sirius. We then had to look at Jupiter (of course). We were all very impressed. Then it was down to work. With the scope working, Red put in the coordinates for the Patientia event and then started to zero in on our target star. After several minutes he had it centered and tracking. He attached a video camera, and we were able to watch the entire event on his laptop. How cool is that? The occultation was successfully recorded and we wrapped up the evening.  Below is the light curve showing the change in intensity of the target star as the asteroid passed in front of it.

Thanks to Jim Bean for generating the plot

We all thought that this event was really cool, and it further heightened our excitement to get started officially.

Todd, Yerington High School

Steve Preston of IOTA has a list of the best occultation events for 2013.  These events are chosen for bright stars and ground-tracks with small errors.  In other words, these are the easiest events and worth special scrutiny for larger campaigns.  However, these are not filtered by area and cover the entire globe.  Of these events there is only one that is relevant to the RECON network and it happens before we’ll have all of the telescopes and cameras in everybody’s hands.  However, there are some of you that will be able to look at this, either visually or with any cameras I can get out quickly enough.

The event is at 2013 Feb 11 06:48 UT.  The actual time will differ by a minute or two depending on your location.  This event is on Sunday night, Feb. 10 at 22:48 (10:48 pm).  You can see more details about this event at Steve’s website.  According to the prediction, our two most northern sites will likely be out of the shadow track but everyone else will be in the track.  If this event were just a couple of months later we would make this one of our official campaigns.  Unfortunately, the timing isn’t right but I wanted to make sure everyone knew of the opportunity in case they want to do something.  I will be happy to provide support and answer questions for anyone that needs help.