Our assignment is to set up within 500 meters of the yellow line. We can go anywhere from Massachusetts to Texas. There are a dozen or so other groups observing across the US, all on slightly different lines: the more complementary paths we have, the better a shape model we can measure.

I picked up the telescope and camera from Joan and Doug Dunham, who live not far from me near DC. They are the founders of the IOTA = International Occultation Timing Association -- the amateur group which has been responsible for the vast majority of the asteroid occultations every observed.

How many have they observed? "Oh, I don't know. Maybe 2000 or 3000? We observe a lot of bright ones from our driveway. And we have a darker site in Arizona that we get some faint ones from." They have a 16-inch SkyWatcher at both locations.

I had two practice nights with the Dunhams, to find the field on the sky. The occultation star is 17th magnitude -- it's very faint, and only visible in a long exposure (6 seconds from the DC metro area!).

Looks like the weather predicted for Tuesday is pretty bad in PA. We did a lot of weather mapping in the week before the event, to try to figure out where we should go.

At T-2 days, the weather looks pretty bad along our whole line! In fact, it looks like one could drive 1000 miles, from Massachusetts to Texas, and not hit clear skies until El Paso.

Although Texas would have clear weather, that was further than I could go. The big cities on my path were Pittsburgh (predicted cloudy), Columbus (cloudy), Cincinnati (cloudy), and Louisville (light clouds!). A little past Lousiville into Indiana it was predicted to be pretty good -- so Indiana it is!

I spent the night in Cincinnati, and then got to Indiana the next morning.

Usually we'd want to have a practice night at the actual site to find the star field, but the weather would not have allowed that here: it was wet the whole drive down.

It's a long drive -- about 9 hours each way. But the fall colors were beautiful!

I ended up in Crawford County, Indiana, near Leavenworth. Once I was near the line, I just went door-to-door, Google Maps in hand, to find a site. I wanted a location which was a) within 500 meters of the line, b) dark with a clear view of the sky, and c) safe.

This site here would have been just fine, except for that very explicit 'no trespassing' sign.

Down the road, I found an empty field, and talked with the guy in the tractor. He turned out to work for the Crawford County Highway Department, and he happily let me use this plot.

"This gravel plot here is all county property. I'll be back here at 7 AM to grade the road, but you're welcome to use it til then. Just watch those street lights -- they might get in your way."

Across the highway, I drove up to this house next to a salvage lot. The owner here was plenty happy to have me set up for the night. He offered me his field, and it looked like it would be a dark site.

Their house is in the shadow of a large truck stop. Truck driving school, truck engines, truck fixing, truck parking, truck everything! "Crawford County is corn, trucks, and bourbon," one person told me.

Meanwhile, my observing partner Jason has shown up! Jason drove down from Boston. He and I observed in South Africa together, culminating in a 10-hour drive across the Karoo in order to outrun a rainstorm headed to the Western Cape. We did it, and we observed our target star beautifully from the super-dark southern hemisphere sky. Jason has observed a bunch of occultations, and it was great to be observing with him again.

Jason endured some major mechanical issues en route from Boston, including a meltdown of his entire electrical system ("The exhaust manifold started leaking, so there was hot exhaust gas going throughout the engine compartment. My entire fuse box is melted.") He managed to ditch his truck and find a rental van early the next morning and still make the remaining 8-hour drive to Indiana.

And Jason's dad Jerry has come as well!

At the recommendation of the tractor driver, we head a few miles south to a beautiful overlook on the Ohio river, with a nice restaurant for dinner. The occultation is at 2 AM, and it's still cloudy -- so we're in no rush.

It's been raining and cloudy for the past 36 hours. But just as soon as I say that, the sun comes out, right at sunset!

Our tractor site doens't turn out to be good: there are a couple of poorly placed lights, and we move across the highway.

So, we set up the telescope behind this chicken coop! Great location: dark skies and easy access.

Setting up the telescope, there's Saturn, Jupiter, and the moon! After setting up, the family on the property came by -- they were curious what we were doing, so we got to show them the planets. Mars was huge, and everyone saw Jupiter, Saturn, and the moon. Nice view in a 16" telescope!

We didn't want to set up too early, since our battery power was limited, and the risk of dew on the optics. But we were able to set up for an hour or so (no power) to show our hosts the night sky. Jason made a nice video of this.

The sky was not completely clear. Clouds went in and out throughout the night... kind of high wispy clouds like this.

And 2 AM came for the observation. We started setting up for it about two hours ahead of time. We aligned, found the field, did some test exposures, repeated, all good. When it came time for the event itself, we went to the field, and were beset with tracking problems. We tried hard to fix it in the 30 minutes we had left, but in the end we failed. I later figured out it was my not tightening one of the motor clutches sufficiently.

So, we were 'close,' but that still counts as a miss. Super frustrating, and it should have been preventable. We likely would have caught this with a good dress rehearsal the night before, set up at the same site in the same conditions. A good lesson to learn, but I wish it would not have taken such a trip for me to learn it.

After I'm back in DC, I meet up again with the Dunhams to obseve another occultation. This one is of a much brighter star -- 10th magnitude, with a 150 km asteroid, so it's bright and 'easy.'

I showed up with my fancy computerized Schmidt-Cassegrain and struggled to get it aligned. David and Joan show up with this camera lens, bolted to a concrete block.

So how do you point it at the correct star? "Oh, you don't. Instead, you know where the star is going to be, and you know what time the event is. So you just figure out the Earth's rotation, point the telescope to where the event will be, bolt it down, and walk away. Tomorrow, the star will drift into view at just the right time. We've done this thousands of times."

Something you only get from experience.