T-2 days: Cloudy to clear(ish)

The stars of Sagittarius (center) and Capricorn (upper left) peek through clouds in Flagstaff.

Today in Flagstaff did not look very promising for observing tonight.  Thick clouds built up during the day and we heard some thunder.  At night, these thick clouds stayed, hid the moon completely, and even let loose some rain in town and at Anderson Mesa and lightning at the DCT.  To make matters worse, CTIO was also socked in.

Discouraged by the weather, I set to work on looking at last night's astrometric data to see what the updates to the occultation path might be.  In the middle of this work, I had a scheduled call with folks on SOFIA on their test flight, to test communications for tomorrow night when we'll send email and call on the satellite phone to give a last-minute prediction update.  As I stood out in the middle of the street (bad cell reception in the house), talking to people in a 747 flying over the ocean south of New Zealand, I looked up and saw the four stars that make up the handle of the Sagittarius teapot asterism.  Definitely a welcome sight, as it means that Pluto is near (its location is marked by a green circle in the image above, but Pluto itself was not captured here).

See SOFIA's flight path on FlightAware

I came back in to find emails from observers at all four telescopes saying they got at least some data tonight!  That's a lot more than I was afraid we might get, given the weather today and tonight.  Now on to data analysis!