Versatile Paver Mounts – Enabling Previous-Night Pre-Pointing and More – 2016 Update

1. Versatile Paver Mounts – Enabling Previous-Night Pre-Pointingand More – 2016 Update 2016 July 30, Stillwater, Oklahoma International Occultation Timing Association - Annual Meeting David & Joan Dunham, and John Broughton

2. Paver mount for previous night pre-pointing By John Broughton The large “hinge” mount fits over the 12” paving stone that can be left in a remote location during the day. John built 6 of them to use with all of my 80mm midi systems, and 2 for maxis. The mounts are sturdier than any tripod I’ve used, and can easily point to high altitudes. The mounts are actually “alt-alt” in orthogonal directions, effectively alt-az at low altitudes. A protractor can be used to pre-set to the target alt. & a laser pointer can be held against the rail, both useful for pointing

3. July 31, 10:23 UT, occultation of 10.3-mag. star by Bertholda Only 2h of dark time, so we set up 4 paver mounts the night before using the Guide pre-point charts provided by Ernie Iverson

4. July 31, 10:23 UT, occultation of 10.3-mag. star by Bertholda P – Paver mount, pre-pointed July 30 (night before) • Attended, focus tube came out, no obs. • No occultation recorded • Steve Kerr, no occultation recorded • - P, Animal attached equipment, no obs. • P, Misspointed • P, OCCULTATION RECORDED • P, Misspointed (star crossed corner early) • Richard Williamson, no occultation • Underlined, star recorded at right time

5. July 31, 10:23 UT, occultation of 10.3-mag. star by Bertholda It was a lot of work with little gain, but at least with one positive, we have a reasonable idea where the shadow passed. It showed that we needed to be more careful with transporting the paver mounts, as subsequent tests confirmed.

6. Scope Placement on Paver Stone for Bertolda Observation

7. New paver mount design for midi’s and maxi’s by John Broughton, 2016 Mar. All the pieces for the mount for an 80mm short-tube “midi” f5 refractor are shown in these pictures by Joan Dunham

8. Attach the back end bar (left side) and feet. The longer foot goes on the right end.

9. Attach the telescope tray. One end is held by a nut, the other by a flat plate attached with thumb screws (which allow side-to-side adjustments).

10. Attach the side rail with two thumb screws. The bottom is held with a screw through a single hole, the top is in one of two ranges. This is the coarse altitude adjustment. Fine adjustment is made by turning the knob on the back end.

11. New Paver Mount (by John Broughton) in use 2016 early March testing, for total solar eclipse

12. Observing the 2016 March 9th total eclipse We tried to record the eclipse from Halmahera Island, eastern Indonesia, with 3 color Cameras and 1 “old-style” black and white camera for comparison with previous eclipses All used the new-design paver mounts, their first use for any event

13. Previous-night prepointing plans There have been no good opportunities to use them since March We brought 3 new-style paver mounts for maxi’s and 4 for mini’s, as well as 2 old-style mounts, home with us from Australia; we’d like to find someone in the US willing to build them here. A promising early evening event in North Carolina at the end of April was clouded out Next attempt will be just to increase the number of deployed stations for the bright asteroidal occultations in late August – early September (my next talk), especially the one before midnight on 2016 August 27 (UT) involving (85) Io in Missouri (or somewhere north or south, depending on the weather forecasts)