Exceptional RECON Opportunity

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On Thursday/Friday night, April 15-16, Hi’iaka (a satellite of Haumea) will be occulting a bright star (magnitude 11.9) with a shadow path centered almost perfectly over the RECON network! The occultation prediction below was updated just this week based upon a successful occultation chord obtained on April 6 at Oukaimeden Observatory in Morocco. This event (starting around 6:30UT on April 16 for locations west of Colorado) is an exceptional science opportunity to better understand and characterize this moon and the Haumea system. We look forward to having all RECON hands on deck to capture this important event!

Occultation prediction for Hi’iaka. Solid black lines is estimated size of object. Red lines are conservative 1-sigma uncertainty estimate, dashed lines are related to the nominal uncertainty of the satellite orbit.