It’s been a busy summer. RECON has been acquiring new QHY systems for our occultation network, and we distributed 24 of these during a recent deployed campaign involving a comparable number of teams that travelled to northern Oregon/southern Washington to measure the Trojan Asteroid Eurybates on September 16 UT. There were significant challenges faced during this campaign due to smoke from regional fires, but data was collected by a handful of teams and there was lots of learning about the QHY system and deployed campaign logistics.

We are currently pulling together an additional 20 camera systems to distribute to our remaining RECON teams. We hope to distribute these out to teams by late November/early December after we have completed our NSF Proposal for RECON 2.0 due on November 15. For intervening RECON campaigns, half of our teams will collect data using the QHY and the other half will use their MallinCam systems.

The first of the campaigns of the academic year will occur on October 21 around 11:34UT, which is early that Wednesday morning. This event will involve Centaur 02QX47, currently located just inside the orbit of Neptune. This is a high probability campaign opportunity with 33% probability of detection. Thanks to all of our teams for indicating your availability and any existing equipment concerns through the RECON Campaign Signup Form.