why all the tizz fit over an asteroid? We heard about near objects all the time.
I've visited cloud croft many years ago and managed to tour an observatory (not the solar one)
what I learned is the observatory had a booster club and was seeking help from the public using computer processing sharing as a way to save money. So teh observatories are obviously networked to the internet. Maybe they didn't "see" a solar event, but maybe something internet related they were not supposed to see.