Observation of the Asteroid occultation this morning

[PTS]

The event was observed at Hokoon.
We arrived there at 10 pm last night, had the equipment set and tried to find some interesting objects to see before the occultation event.

As usual, a 10-second exposure revealed M57 and its central star, not a bad start.

Then we tried to see Comet PanStarr. ALthough it is low in the NW sky, we have 75% confidence that there was something on the screen, As a 15-mag star next to it was clearly seen, the Comet should be fainter than 15-mag.

Our third effort was to pin point the 12.1 mag star to be occulted later. It was a simple matter after "calibrating" the tracking system with Vega, then slewed the telescope to the target location. When stars down to 15-mag were visible on the screen, we felt good prospect.

There was still several hours to go before the event, we turned to M74. In a 10-second exposure, the core of M74 was faint, but the stars were visible again down to about 15-mag. The telescope was slewed to include the 12.5 mag reference star given by AAVSO (the only that could be in the same FOV in my StellaCam III), and many frames were captured. Visually, the supernova was about 12.5-mag.

When we slewed back to the occultation target after 2 am, a VERY bright "star" had entered the FOV. This must be the asteroid itself, and I started to capture at 1 frame/5 minutes to record the movement of teh asteroid.

As it approached 04:59, the start of the "bracketed time", the star and the asteroid were very close but definitely separated. Exposure was cut to 1/15 second and still the 12.1 mag star was clearly visible. Video recording started and the screen visually monitored until the 2 separated again at 05:15 am, the end of the "bracketed time".

The observation is deemed successful, However, it may be a very difficult task to get the resulting data analysed. I am not yet sure how to proceed.

pts