This past week, the European Space Agency released its first dataset produced by the Gaia Mission, a spacecraft in orbit around the Earth-Sun second Lagrange point (L2). This dataset provides precise position and brightness information for over 1.1 billion stars in the Milky Way and satellite galaxies, along with distances and proper motions for 2 million of these. With still more data to come, Gaia provides the most comprehensive 3-dimensional map of the stars in our galaxy.

First release of Gaia dataset (ESA)

The release of this dataset is extremely significant to RECON, as it essentially eliminates previous uncertainties in the positional information of occultation target stars. This will allow us to make more precise predictions of occultation paths for trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs). Uncertainties remain in our measurements of TNO positions, but Gaia provides a significant improvement to our occultation prediction efforts.

Thanks to the 70 team representatives – included 10 students – who joined us in Carson City back in August for our first annual RECON Team Meeting! The meeting was a very productive opportunity to reconnect, review recent publications, and prepare for future research campaigns. For copies of presentations and materials, visit our Presentations and Educational Resources Page. Below is a group photo from the event:

RECON Team Meeting, Carson City, 2016

We  also discussed plans for our next team meeting, which will likely be held mid- to late-October 2017 up in the Pacific Northwest!

Below are star fields for Pluto on Wednesday night:

and Thursday night:

RECON is gearing up for its first annual Team Meeting to be held in Carson City, Nevada, August 3-5. This science team meeting is an opportunity for representatives from all of our community teams to come together to talk about recent science results, upcoming campaigns, and procedural updates on the project.

More information on the RECON Team Meeting Webpage. Team representatives should use the REGISTER NOW link on that page to sign up for the meeting.

Many RECON teams successfully recorded data from our double campaign earlier this week. Team are currently reporting their observations by submitting event reports and uploading video and logsheet files to SwRI in Boulder.

For our teams in the Northwest, there are four upcoming opportunities to connect and collaborate.  Marc Buie will be hosting three RECON Meet-Ups this weekend:

• Friday, May 13 in Okanogan
• Saturday, May 14 in Ellensburg (including public talk on New Horizons)
• Sunday, May 15 in The Dalles

Any and all community members are encouraged attend any of these opportunities to connect with other RECON teams and talk through questions about the project.

Also, NASA researcher scientist Dr. Bonnie Buratti will be giving a presentation on the Solar System at Ridgeview High School in Oregon on Friday, May 20. This is another opportunity for Oregon RECON teams to connect. Funds provided through Oregon State are available to help reimburse the cost of shuttling students to this event. To learn more email Amanda Schroeder, schroeam@oregonstate.edu. Feel free to contact Beverly (Schlegel) Vazquez at schlegeb@oregonstate.edu to ask me any questions you have about this event or if you are interested in hosting a table.

May Day is a day of celebration situated midway between the Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice. This May will also be a busy RECON month!  We wanted to share the following RECON events with our community.

Full campaign night involving two RECON events in early May
Monday, May 9 starting ~12:50AM PDT/MST (2016 May 09 ~07:50 UT)

Mother’s Day is on Sunday, May 8. Later than Sunday night/Monday morning, there are two promising RECON events. The first event, announced to the network back in early April, involves Classical Kuiper Belt Object 99HR11. This is a late event occurring just after midnight on the morning of Monday May 9.

Just last week, we received word from astronomers in South America that another event involving Centaur 02GZ32 has a very high probability of passing directly over the network on the same night. Marc and the RIO group are conducting observations and prediction work this week to pin down uncertainties on the shadow path. Given the possibility of discovering a ring system around this Centaur, we will be asking RECON team members to record this event as well if current predictions hold.

Marc will be visiting teams throughout Washington State the following weekend
Friday, May 13 PDT -Training Meetup in Okanogan
Saturday, May 14 PDT -Training Meetup in Ellensburg
Sunday, May 15 PDT – Training Meetup in The Dalles

Marc will be in Washington State the weekend of May 13-15.  Similar to John’s trip through Oregon back in January, nearby teams are encouraged to join for one of the above mini-meetups as an opportunity to reconnect with other RECON team members and also to talk through any questions about the project.  Times and locations will be provided shortly, along with a sign-up form to RSVP for these meet-ups.

Full Campaign involving Scattered Disc Object 99CY11 in late May
Wednesday, May 25 ~11:22 PDT/MST (2016 May 26 ~06:22 UT)

Toward the end of May, our seventh full RECON campaign involves Scattered Disk Object 99CY118, with an orbit that carries the object over twice as far from the Sun as Pluto! Thanks for completing the Pre-Event Confirmation Form at the link above.

2016 RECON Team Meeting in Carson City Nevada during early August
Wednesday-Friday, August 3-5 PDT

We have funding in our NSF award to host three team meetings between now and Fall 2019. We will be providing funding for 1 representative from each of our 55 communities to attend this meeting. Additional team members are also welcome, and we will have a block of extra hotel rooms at our conference rate. We will be providing a registration form to sign up for this event later this week.

Just wanted to wish everyone in RECON a happy Spring Equinox, which occurs at 9:30PM PDT tonight (20 March @ 4:30 UT)!

We also wanted to take this moment thank the RECON network for a great year.  Our Southern RECON teams met in Kingman, Arizona, one year ago today!

RECON Southern Training Workshop, March 19-22, 2015

Our first RECON manuscript has been published in The Astronomical Journal and featured in AAS Nova.

The paper describes the design and development of the RECON Project and will serve as an important technical reference for future results papers.

Thank you again to all of our RECON students, teachers, and community members for your continued contributions to this citizen science research effort!!!