This project was driven out of necessity. Several factors make it challenging to record occultation timings, and a couple more so in the New England winters. Let me start with an overview of the process setting up before and tearing down after capturing lunar grazes and stellar occultations.

SCORE, a self-contained, self-powered occultation timing recorder

First, one has to assemble the necessary equipment. My set up includes a low-light video camera, GPS time insertion unit, video monitor, digital video recorder, batteries, spare tapes, focal reducer, cables, video amplifier, all of the cables to interconnect and power the equipment, and then separately, a telescope and pointing apparatus, either a tripod or equatorial mount.

Then you need to load up the car, drive to the observing site, set up and align your telescope, connect all of the components and test them, find your target, wait, record and then pack up everything and return home.

I may be over-complicating this, because IOTA folks like Scotty Degenhart take a more minimalist approach. But me being me, knowing my thirst for technology and gadgets and my tendency to misplace things or forget crucial components when embarking on a late-night observing run, had to figure out a way to keep everything together as a set of dedicated components. As you know from reading my blog, sometimes my occultation runs involve 7,000 mile airplane flights followed by 250km drives over mountain roads, taking me far enough from home that stopping in the nearest electronics superstore for a missing component is not an option.

SCORE Close-Up

Now let’s factor in cold New England winters. My first adventure with all of this equipment was to record a lunar graze by Antares on the morning of  January 11, 2010. The site was not far from home, and I could easily wake, pack and be on site well before the 7:39 am event. But the temperature at 6:00 am was 2° F or -17° C! It had warmed up to 7°F by 7:00 but connecting all of the parts was tough with gloves on, and having to remove them for even a minute left my fingers aching from the cold. There are 12 cables and 18 separate connections necessary to get everything hooked up and working, and this creates a rat’s nest of wire that’s complicated considerably when the cables are so stiff from the cold that the insulation cracked on one of them.

And packing up afterwards was really problematic because the cables don’t coil up neatly when they’re so stiff. I tried stuffing everything into the case but I closed the lid on the GPS antenna wire, slicing it in two. I just shoved the open case with wires dangling into the back of the Prius and headed home, thinking about a solution. Heck, astronomy is my hobby, and it’s supposed to be fun, but there I was, numb to the core with a mess of expensive and sensitive equipment thrown into the back of the car.

And that very day I stumbled upon Hristo Pavlov’s website, showing his occultation setup neatly packaged in a small suitcase. This was the solution I was looking for, and that’s how SCORE came to be.

UPDATE: I have added a microphone to SCORE in order to record audio tracks such as user reactions or a WWV radio broadcast onto the same tape as the video recording. The Canon HandiCam allows a separate audio input to be used in conjunction with a video input (DV or S-Video).

SCORE is encased in a briefcase-sized toolbox I bought at one of those shopping clubs many years back. The case is made from medium density fiberboard in a metal frame, covered on the outside with a textured aluminum skin and on the inside with 3/16″ dense foam. It’s not an expensive case, nor is it watertight, but I’ve checked in in airline baggage twice and it suffered only normal wear and tear, and the custom dividers and foam packing inside protected the equipment from damage.

Components;

1. Digital Prism 7″  diagonal, 12 Volt DC  LCD television. The unit will receive over-the-air digital TV broadcast and also has a Coax A/V input.
2. SuperCircuits PC164- EX2 Low Light Video Camera, sensitive to 0.0003 lux. With a 14″ SCT I can get down to better than 13th magnitude stars. I use this with an OWL  .5 focal reducer and C to 1.25″ adapter to give me a wider field and lower detectable magnitude.
3. System Charger – 1.5A, 12VDC
4. MiniDV Tapes, C-Mount lens
5. Canon ZR100 MiniDV CamCorder. This unit is used as a Digital Video Recorder. It converts the analog PC164 camera output to digital format and records it to MiniDV tape, saving it in uncompressed AVI.
6. 25′ of dual coax plus 12VDC power to connect the PC164 camera
7. PYLE View Video Distribution Amplifier, model PLV2. This serves 2 purposes, to boost the signal output of the GPS Video Overlay before it reaches the DVR, and to allow connection of an external video monitor for demonstration and teaching.
8. 12 Volt, 9 AH sealed lead-acid battery. I purchased this at WalMart but later found there are many sources, and that 9AH was way too much reserve power. If I had to do it over I’d pick a 4-5AH battery and save the weight.
9. Blackbox Camera Sprite Precision GPS Time Video Overlay Unit. This unit takes GPS data including location, altitude and time, and overlays it onto the recorded video.
10. The Power Head contains an analog voltage meter, on/off switch and charging circuitry for the lead-acid battery.