Sorry for any confusion due to the late notice. I am meeting with David at
6pm at the observatory to see if we can use that site. Reference Tom's
earlier message for more details. If you are interested in helping with
this observation please meet at the observatory at 6:30 and David can brief
you on his plans. I have something tonight at 7pm, so I am going to be
leaving early.
Thanks again for any help you can provide
On Tue, Oct 22, 2019 at 1:03 PM Tom Mozdzen <tjmozdzen@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Sorry about the short notice, but David Dunham has a group of people
putting out telescopes around the east valley and needs help with the pick
up - after the occultation is observed.
He'd like to do a training session tonight, and then have the helpers
perform the task tomorrow night.
Briefly, the locations are
on Usuary Road near the mountain park entrance,
near US 79 and US 60
US & Gold Canyon Rd
and possibly have the Riparian Preserve (Greenfield and Guadalupe) replace
one of the above sites if it can see 13 degrees above the horizon.
David Dunham is thinking about having the training session at the Gilbert
Riparian Preserve tonight. Please contact him if you can help out. Psyche
is a really cool asteroid - thought to be the metal core of a once larger
object.
Here is his contact information:
David Dunham, dunham@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, phone 301-526-5590
We could use some help from you and/or one or two of your colleagues for
the occultation, simple but location and time-critical work. Most observers
of the occultation have selected locations that cover the central part of
the path well, but my wife and I want to cover the northern and southern
limit areas of the path that are most important for measuring the size and
shape of Psyche’s profile. Because the Psyche occultation path is so wide,
we can’t cover both limits with our multiple stations by ourselves. The
southern limit region is over the eastern and southeastern exurbs of
Phoenix, so this evening, we plan to set up three stations at safe
locations in that area; the small telescopes and their mounts will be set
up on paver stones, and precisely “pre-pointed” as described in the
attached .pdf poster (the lower-right panel even shows a small map of the
area where we plan to deploy for the Psyche southern limit region, for
another asteroidal occultation early this year). After each telescope is
pre-pointed, we need volunteers who can gently lift the telescope with its
mount off of the paver stone and put it in their car, then keep the
equipment at their place during the day (the paver stone stays at the safe
roadside location where it is very unlikely to be noticed, or disturbed,
during the day). Then, tomorrow evening, around 10pm or about an hour
before the occultation, go back to the paver stone, gently replace the
scope and mount on the paver (there will be markings on it to show exactly
how to place the scope so that it will point in the direction of the
occultation), and turn on the small laptop computer or tablet and GPS
timing box that you will connect to the camera on the telescope. We will
show you exactly what to do this evening and rehearse the procedure for
tomorrow night. We will start working at the first site about 7pm, and hope
that anyone who might help can meet us there by about 7:45pm; after we are
done at that site, we’ll go to the second site about 6 miles farther
southeast. The first site is near the entrance to Lost Dutchman State Park.
One
of my colleagues, Dale Stanbridge, will be helping with this effort, as
he’s done in the past. It would be great if we could have a person do what
I described above, for each of the three stations. While they will be busy
tomorrow night for the actual occultation, my wife and I will be setting up
some unattended stations to cover the northern-limit region around Kingman.
In addition to the paver stone stations, we have an extra recording and
timing system that perhaps could be used with the large telescope at the
East Valley Astronomy Club’s (EVAC’s) Gilbert Riparian Centennial
Observatory (GRCO), if someone could go there and work with someone from
EVAC who knows how to use that telescope. If someone observse at GRCO, and
the scope can reach the target at altitude 13 deg., azimuth 238 deg. (I’m
not sure that trees might block the view in that direction, or that the
telescope can point that low), that would duplicate the Lost Dutchman State
Park chord, in which case, our first station would instead be near Usery
Mountain Road
Best regards,
David Dunham, dunham@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, phone 301-526-5590
