On Wednesday night, February 17th, Breno & I were to met Dennis and other CASF members at the observatory of the high school where he teaches, the Colégio Christus.

On the way to the school, we stopped at a restaurant to pick up Dennis, and briefly met one of the three teams representing the Paris Observatory.

Frederic Vachier (Observatório de Paris) , Dennis Weaver Lima (CASF/Observatório Astronômico Christus), Saulo Machado (GaeA), Bruce Berger (MIT, Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston), Felipe Braga Ribas (Observatório Nacional - ON), Breno Giacchini (REA/CEAMIG)

We made introductions and I thanked Felipe Ribas, a PhD with the National Observatory in Rio de Janeiro.  Felipe was responsible for getting our US team an invitation letter so that Matt Lockhart and I could get our academic visas. With Felipe was Frederic Vachier, with the Paris Observatory, and Saulo Machado from Grupo de Apoio em Eventos Astronomicos (Groups Supporting Astronomical Events) in Rio de Janeiro. Saulo was a volunteer like me and well known in Fortaleza. It was no more than 10 minutes between Hello and Goodbye as each team left for their night’s work.

This Escola Christus school houses close to 3,000 students and features a 5 meter dome on the roof, 5 stories high. Inside the huge dome, meant to host classroom sized crowds, was a 20cm home made Newtonian on a yoke mount.  It was a piece of beautiful craftsmanship and I regret that I did not get a good picture because we were pretty busy that night.

This amateur-made 20cm reflector in background and 25cm Meade SCT in the foreground, inside the dome on top of Colégio Christus.

We set up the Meade LX200 GPS right next to the Newtonian and Dennis tried to do a star alignment but clouds got in the way.  While he was busy with that, I set up the POETS camera, computer and GPS. A board had loosened up inside the computer during transport to Brazil, but after a while the problem was fixed and some test images using a C-mount lens were taken. But those cursed clouds remained during our practice session on Wednesday, and we were unable to find our target. Clouds would continue to be a problem throughout the expedition.

The next night there was lots of activity planned for the observatory. A news crew from Diario, the local newspaper and also Fortaleza TV showed up for interviews, photos and news footage. The Clube de Astronomia de Fortaleza, of which George Yure is President, has an active member that also works for Diario, Antonio Vettorazzi. The club is actively trying to recruit new members and to raise public awareness of the night skies, and their news appears frequently in the press.

George Yure, President of CASF

I was anxious to get started checking out the equipment and finding our target star, I breathed a sigh of relief that we had enough time before the crews arrived to at least get the equipment set up and the scope aligned. Just as we opened the dome for the latter the crews arrived, but clouds this night were even heavier than the past night, so the 90 minutes or so it would take for the interviews were not the limiting factor in our progress.

The TV reporter was surprisingly young but asked very good questions as she prepared up for the on-camera segment. Here’s a picture of me telling her about the tremendous hospitality my Brazilian host were showing, and why I had traveled so far to photograph just a one minute event.

Me in an interview with a Fortaleza TV Reporter.

Next came the newspaper reporters, asking some of the same questions. Though I plugged ATMoB several times, only my M.I.T. connection made it into the article. Jumping ahead a bit, here’s what the article looked like in the next morning’s paper.

Antonio Vettorazzo holding the February 19th issue of Diario Nordeste. Click image to go to the online article.

The clouds did not clear that night, so our elusive target remained unseen through our station 1 telescope.

I’ve been busy the past week…

Arrived in Fortaleza about 7:30 on Tuesday (2/16/10) evening and I was met by 7 members of the Clube de Astronomia de Fortaleza. Three club members joined me for dinner after a quick stop at the Holiday Inn to check in and freshen up after 21 hours of travel.

Dennis Weaver

I met Dennis Weaver through Breno Giacchini, IOTA Coordinator for Brazil. Dennis, a high school astronomy teacher in Fortaleza, arranged for the expedition to use the school’s 25cm Meade LX200 GPS  telescope. Also at dinner was someone with an excellent command of the English language, Doctor Hilbernon Almeida Filho, a medical school graduate fulfilling his residency requirements. We were joined by his lovely friend Tatiana Papilio who works in the offices of one of Brazil’s premier cashew nut companies. We had fish and something new to me, sun-dried steak, along with vegetables, beans and rice. My first real meal in Brazil (not counting McDonald’s at the Sao Paulo airport) was very, very good.

Our plan was to meet the next night at the high school where Dennis teaches, and set up the telescope under the dome to check out the MIT POETS camera on the scope we’d be using for the first station, and hopefully to find our target star.

On Wednesday Hilbernon took me to Croco Beach where we feasted on a delicious buffet at a shaded table right at water’s edge. Vendors made their rounds selling linens, hats, sunglasses, sandals, and there was some crazy guy beating a cardboard box with a stick while making sounds like a terrified cat. I have no idea if he was selling something or just looking to incite a riot, but it sounded terrible –  not many people were laughing. And of course there were the sunbathers, beautiful Brazilian people enjoying the great weather and warm waters of Norteste Estada Ciera.

Cartier Ramallo, Dennis Weaver, Me, Hilbernon Almeida Filmo, Paulo Regis

After lunch, Hilbernon and I went to the home of Paulo Regis to look at the telescope we’d be using for the second station. Paulo had a beautiful 16″ dob and a Meade LXD-75 20cm f/5 Schmidt-Newtonian. We’d be using the Schmidt-Newt for the occultation because the equatorial drive would make it easier to find and track our target. We were joined at Paulo’s by Cartier Ramallo from CASF, Dennis Weaver, and Paulo’s mother, girlfriend and nephew.

Astute northern-hemisphere astronomers might notice something amiss with the equatorial mount in this picture. That’s right, the RA axis is level, or actually at 3°. Meade didn’t design the mount to be set to this latitude, and Paulo was having a little trouble because the counterweight shaft hit the tripod.  A little adjustment set that right, but it got me to thinking – how the heck do you polar align when Polaris is 3° below the horizon and southern pole star is just 3° above. I left that up to the equatorial (geographically-speaking) experts.

Next – practice sessions at the observatory…

Well, here I am in the Aeroporto International de San Paulo. I upgraded my seat to Economy Plus and it was somewhat comfortable, certainly better than the back of the plane that the crew calls ‘The Village’.

I slept for about 2/3 of the 10 hour flight.

It’s now 11:30am and my flight to Fortaleza leaves in 4 hours so I’m pretty much stuck here – it’ll take a taxi more than an hour to reach the city.

The weather is very comfortable at 91F, partly cloudy and humid enough to heal my dry, cracked hands, which suffer from the 27% (lack of) humidity back home.

Oh, and here’s my only impression of Sao Paulo…

Well, it’s off to Brazil tomorrow on another research expedition to help characterize the minor planet 20000 Varuna. It’ll be visible to us in Gemini just after twilight, or rather it’s shadow will be visible as it occults GSC 1914:301 on Friday night, 23:06UT. I’m still packing so not much time to write now, but I thought I’d post the logo I came up with to commemorate the event.

Logo to commemorate the coming together of the scientists at MIT and Amateur Astronomers from the United States (ATMoB) and Brazil for the study of Kuiper Belt Objects.

OK, I realize it’s been a while since I posted. I started this blog with the good intentions of posting something once a week, and I have failed. Why? Because I’ve got so many projects going on, and first on that list is finding a full-time job.

I’m happy to share with you a list of the other things I’ve been working on, to let you know I’m not dead, and to serve as my to-do list for new articles on the blog. The list isn’t in any order so please keep coming back, or subscribe via RSS, and feel free to prod me with a comment or email if you think I need it.

• Binary star discovery – In December Marek Kozubal (Clay Center Observatory) Glenn Meurer (ATMoB) and I were the only people on earth to view the occultation by Ekard. We’re pretty sure that the light curves show a double star where none has been reported before.
• Self-Contained Occultation REcorder (SCORE) – This is my new rig to capture occultation data. It features a PC164CEX video camera, BlackBox GPS Video Overlay, Digital Video Recorder, Video Amplifier and 7″ LCD screen. It’s totally self-powered with a 9AH battery, and fits into a briefcase weighing about 12 pounds.
• 1929 South Bend 9×36 Lathe restoration – OK, not strictly astronomy, but a new and necessary addition to my shop for making astronomy accessories. This expands my capabilities immensly, and coupled with the Clausing mill, band saw, 6 grinders and sanders and 2 overflowing Craftsman tool boxes , gives me some great capabilities.
• 1996 Paramount GT1100 upgrade – Our club had a prototype telescope pointing mount made by those geniuses at <Software Bisque>. It’s the grandfather of the famous Paramount ME used throughout the world for precision telescope pointing and tracking. Well over the past 8 months I’ve been upgrading and testing the entire electro-mechanical system, replacing unreliable (it WAS a prototype) and underpowered components with the latest and greatest from the Bisque boys.

Bruce Berger (me) and Glenn Meurer

My headline might seem a little risqué, but since this is an astronomy website it’s not what you think. As you read in the post below, the ATMoB team captured data on the occultation of a 10.5 magnitude star in Aquarius by a 129km diameter (est.) asteroid named 694 Ekard. Just 12 hours later, a slightly dimmer star (10.8 mag) was eclipsed by an approximately 75km diameter asteroid – 79 Eurynome and the ATMoB team captured that one also. It’s not common for a stationary team to capture two events in one night, so we feel both lucky and honored to accomplish such a feat.

We reported the occultation time as 09:47:34.4 UT and it lasted 2.5 seconds. Unfortunately the asteroid was not visible during the event.

79 Eurynome (pronounced /ew-RIN-a-mee) is a quite large and bright main belt asteroid composed of silicate rock. Eurynome was discovered by James Craig Watson on September 14, 1863. It was his first asteroid discovery. It is named after one of the many Eurynomes in Greek mythology.

James C. Watson - U Michigan Archives

Here’s what Wikipedia says about it’s discoverer, James Craig Watson, …”Watson (January 28, 1838–November 22, 1880) was a Canadian-American astronomer born in the village of Fingal, Ontario Canada. His family relocated to Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1850. Watson was considered a child prodigy in mathematics, and spent only a day and a half in high school before quitting, because he felt he knew more about mathematics than the teacher. At age 15 he was matriculated at the University of Michigan, where he studied the classical languages. He later was lectured in astronomy by professor Franz Brünnow.

He was the second director of Detroit Observatory (from 1863 to 1879), succeeding Franz Brünnow. He wrote the textbook Theoretical Astronomy in 1868.

He discovered 22 asteroids, beginning with 79 Eurynome in 1863. One of his asteroid discoveries, 139 Juewa was made in Beijing when Watson was there to observe the 1874 transit of Venus. The name Juewa was chosen by Chinese officials (in modern pinyin, pronounced ruìhuá).

He was a strong believer in the existence of the planet Vulcan, a hypothetical planet closer to the Sun than Mercury, which is now known not to exist (however the existence of small Vulcanoid planetoids remains a possibility). He believed he had seen such two such planets during a July 1878 solar eclipse in Wyoming.

James Craig Watson Medal

He died of peritonitis at the age of only 42. He had amassed a considerable amount of money through non-astronomical business activities. By bequest he established the James Craig Watson Medal, awarded every three years by the National Academy of Sciences for contributions to astronomy.

The asteroid 729 Watsonia is named in his honour, as is the lunar crater Watson.”

Bruce

Well, we saw it – or rather we saw it, then it winked out, and then it was there again. Magnitude 10.5 TYCO 0528-00946-1 star in Aquarius winked out for about 2 seconds while Gary Jacobson, Ken Cantrell, Marion Hochuli, Tom Calderwood and I watched.

Joel Hastings Metcalf

This was an occultation by 694 Ekard, a 12.6 Mag asteroid discovered by Joel Hasting Metcalf on November 7, 1909 from Taunton, Massachusetts. Metcalf went to Harvard Divinity Schoolwhere he studied to become a Unitarian minister, serving in Vermont, Taunton and Winchester, Massachusetts and finally in Portland Maine. He died in 1925 just after his 59th birthday, but not before discovering several comets, including 23P/Brorsen-Metcalf and 97P/Metcalf-Brewington. He also discovered 41 asteroids, several of them bearing names obviously linked to his alma-mater and areas where he served as minister.

To capture this event we used a borrowed Sony Camcorder (thanks Glenn Meurer!) and recorded the event on both VHS tape and MiniDV tape. Audio timing signals from WWV were broadcast onto the tapes.

Gary Jacobson

Also successfully witnessing the event were ATMoB members Mike Mattei from his observatory in Littleton, and Mike Hill from his home in Marlborough.

In just a few hours another asteroid shadow will pass our way – this one named Eurynome. Glenn and I are setting our alarms for 3am in order to record this early morning event.

Bruce

Hoping some readers will join me at the ATMob Observatory to record the occultation by asteroid Ekard. We’re setting up at 4:30.

details at: http://asteroidoccultations.com/2009_11/1108_694_18126.htm

My apologies if you tried to visit here from about 3pm EST Friday to 11am Saturday and found a blank page. I was doing a WordPress upgrade and well, it failed. Thanks to great support from Jennifer at Bizland, my web host of many years, everything’s back up now except for some links and a widget or two.

Bruce