Happy May Day!

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.

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