During the week of Thanksgiving, the RECON community is looking forward to the best TNO occultation opportunity since the start of our full network last year!  On Wednesday morning, November 23, around 3:55AM Pacific (4:55AM Mountain), Centaur 08FC76 will be occulting 14.6 magnitude star UC4-565-008609 in the constellation Taurus.

Prediction map for 08FC76

This event is EXACTLY the type of campaign that RECON was designed to pursue.  As shown on the map here, the predicted centerline for the occultation shadow passes directly through the center of our network! Recently kicked into an orbit neighboring Saturn, Centaur 08FC76 will be only 9.6 AU from Earth. Based on how well we know the orbit for this object, the 1-sigma cross-track uncertainty in the shadow path prediction is only 595 km. Importantly, this places every RECON telescope site from Madras, Oregon to Idyllwild, California within this zone of high probability for detection. That’s 43 of our 60 communities!!! Based upon our calculations, there is at least a 67% probability that RECON will capture this event, more than double any of our previous events.

And, as with all RECON events, each telescope site is crucial for mapping out the region of space around this TNO. Does this Centaur have a smaller moon . . . or moons?  Does it have rings? How big is it actually? How bright is it? What is its shape? We plan to address all of these questions and more through data collected during this upcoming holiday campaign!

Marc has also taken the extra step of incorporating recent data from the Gaia Mission in to the prediction above. With the additional precision provided on the position of the target star, the prediction path has remained in the center of the network. This makes for an even stronger prediction that the shadow of this Centaur will passing over our network on the morning of November 23. This is the highest probability event we have had since the start of the project!

For more information on this event, visit the Event Page and Event Detail Page for 08FC76. RECON Teams are asked to sign up for the event using the RECON Campaign Signup Form. We are extremely thankful to all of our RECON team members for supporting this upcoming campaign and for all of the preparation and dedication that has gotten us to this point.