All,

After a year and a half hiatus from all astronomy, I am going to emerge
from my "cave" one time to attempt possibly one of the most optimal
asteroidal occultation alignments one could ever hope for! (as a lot of
you already know) A very bright star (5.8 red mag LQ Aqr) will have the
already known binary asteroid (90) Antiope pass in front of it as seen
from the Western North America:

http://www.asteroidoccultation.com/2011_07/0719_90_23903_Map.gif

There are now over 80 individual declared observing sites spread out
over more than 300km of earth's surface to watch for this bright star to
possibly blink out in an effort to measure the shadows of both rocks in
the Antiope binary asteroid system. The predicted orientation of the
rocks can be seen on the IOTA Antiope Website below, and details for
the coordinated effort for this monumental event are being updated
regularly here:

http://www.asteroidoccultation.com/observations/NA/2011Meeting/Antiope.htm

The question that EVERYONE always wants to know immediately is, did an
occultation occur in the predicted path?! Well, if network
communications and circumstances are favorable, you will have your
answer immediately and LIVE!! As in years past I plan to once again
broadcast my entire occultation multistation deployment LIVE on Scottys
Sky. 18 of the 80 observing stations are mine. I intend to show my
successes and even my failures LIVE as they happen. Here is the link to
click on:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/scottys-sky

BROADCAST SCHEDULE (All times in PDT. Add 2 hours for CDT):



MONDAY JULY 18TH
- Throughout the day of Monday July 18th 2011 I will be broadcasting my
pre-event preparations as I ready my 18 individual sites.

- 8:30PM I expect to be streaming live video and will give a live
equipment tour.
- 9PM Civil Twilight begins and as soon as I can acquire the first
visible star I will prepoint the first station, then the action starts!!!
- From 9:10 PM to Tuesday 3AM I expect to be on the road hightailing it
to the next 17 sites to deploy.

TUESDAY JULY 19TH
- By 3AM I expect to have deployed 17 of the 18 stations and will have
arrived at my final location where I will broadcast the occultation LIVE
at +59km North of centerline.
- OCCULTATION EVENT sould occur somewhere between 3:24 to 3:26 AM!


WHAT TO EXPECT:

I will patch the video from my mighty mini telescope straight into the
video stream, so you will be seeing exactly what the telescope is seeing
LIVE as it happens. The star is expected to fade out for possibly as
long as 30 seconds and fade back in. Depending on where the actual
shadows cross and where I am standing we could see a shorter event
followed by a second occultation. Also, since the target star is a known
large red star it is quite possible if I were on the edge of the
asteroid that the star may only partially fade and not go completely out
because part of the star is behind the asteroid while part of it is
still visible. I could also see no change in the brightness of the
target star indicating that I may be right between the two rocks, i.e.
both shadows missed me, or that there was a large path shift and the
shadows fell somewhere else. These are all possible scenarios, but
statistics tell us that we are 71% likely to see something (that is at
least better than 50/50).

Also, it remains possible that the target star is a previously unknown
binary star system. This would mean that we might see the light of the
star disappear in steps. AND it is yet possible that with so many
stations set up that we might discover a previously unknown satellite of
Antiope. Here is some more detailed information on what to expect:

http://www.asteroidoccultation.com/observations/NA/2011Meeting/DetailedAntiopeIn\
formation_Dunham0708.txt

Join in on the madness, I mean fun Monday night/Tuesday morning July
18th/19th! You even have the option of a live Chat during this event.
Just save this link:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/scottys-sky

See ya' there! Now if the weather gods and equipment gods can smile down
on us....

Scotty

--
Columbia, TN USA
http://scottysmightymini.com/
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/scottys-sky
scotty@...
888-687-5444 toll free to my cell