Berbericia Occultation: May 17, 2004

There were two asteroid occultations through Santa Cruz this evening. Chris Angelos joined me for the first event, which happened right after my Astro 10 evening class. Berbericia was the more marginal. We were on the southern edge of the uncertainty zone. I continue to find ways to not get data. This time, I decided to use the 10" LX200 visually. The problem was, the star chart I made was in 'normal' orientation, and I didn't make a mirror image version as I could have using ECU. The 10" is alt-az, and the star field was just too hard to identify, given that the stars were not quite accurately done in brightness, and the orientation was unclear and right-left reversed. I do believe I was looking at the right field at the time of the occultation, but after trying afterwards to identify, I could not be sure of the field I was watching in relation to the proper centering. Bottom line, I can't say whether there was an occultation or not.

Result - No data.

The Kuopia event at 2am later was better centered on Santa Cruz, but the altitude was too low from Cabrillo observatory, and I was just too tired after this event, a hard Monday, and a very long and exhausting weekend Astro 28J trip. So, no attempt was made.