Shevill Mathers emailed me the following account from Hobart.
Best Regards
Gary Kopff
Managing Director
Wildcard Innovations Pty. Ltd.
20 Kilmory Place
Mount Kuring-Gai NSW 2080
Australia
Phone +61-2-9457-9049
Fax +61-2-9457-9593
sales@wildcard-innovations.com.au
http://www.wildcard-innovations.com.au
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Originally Posted by Shevill Mathers
Hello All
A very successful Pluto occultation event, clear skies leading up to and during the occultation. All three scopes performed well - after all the usual moments of frustration. The Argo Navis worked well on the C14 & Stefan was very pleased with it.
I packed in around 4am. took some moonlit shots of the Canopus site as well as people and scopes, which I think will look very interesting, they show the location, clouds and how bright it was,- hence the level of difficulty with all the preparation.
Just been interviewed live on ABC radio by Sally Dakers, what, where, who and why etc. She had read Martin Georges' Sunday Mercury article and wanted to talk to someone actually involved on-site - Paul Jackson gave her my name, (not a problem Paul) she phoned me earIy evening while at Canopus for a 6.30am interview!!
I was teamed up with Dr Wolfgang Beisker from Munich on the 16", French astronomer, Alain was with our fearless Dr Stefan Dieters.
Munich is on the WORLD news for soccer reasons, so we decided to toast them and us with French bubbly, in honour of the French team member, Alain.
The American team were with Dr John Greenhill on the 1-metre and they certainly got good data. Clouds were a constant threat for us all but OK during the event.
A wonderful group of people to work with. The data extraction will takes weeks - and of course each country is eager to be the first to publish their results in Nature or whatever. To me, it can best be described as 'looking for a needle in a haystack' on the computer screen. At 13th & 14th mag, they are just very faint specks of light.
Great to see Laurie, Phil & Alan giving local support. Laurie took some pics so lots along with Sandra's & mine. Mt Canopus doing astro science - in the news is always a good thing. I have been keeping Doug Chipman, CCC, up to date.
Got to write up some news clips now for various electronic media, then off to bed.
Best Wishes,
Shevill
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