2018 December 24 UT – 05RM43 (OPTIONAL)

Event Details

For all event details (including sense-up) visit: RECON Event Detail Page for 05RM43

Below are finder charts and starfield images  for an optional RECON campaign on 2018 December 24 starting at 02:17UT.  For our RECON teams, this UT time corresponds to the evening of Sunday, December 23 starting at 6:17PM Pacific / 7:17PM Mountain. 

We did not call this event as an official RECON campaign back in November due to concerns that many of our team members would be traveling and/or not have access to their school sites due to the winter holiday.  However, given that the TNO is fairly large (between 300-800 km in diameter) and the Lucky Star occultation project run out of l’Observatoire de Paris is also planning to observe the event, we would like to announce this as an optional campaign for any RECON teams that are available to observe the Sunday evening before Christmas Eve.  Because the shadow of the object will stretch over 300 km, we can still get a good science result with just 150 km spacing.  So if even a third of our RECON sites are available to participate, the probabilities are reasonable for getting useful results from this optional campaign event.  

Good luck to all RECON teams that are able to participate in this optional event.

Pre-Event Checklist

  1. Complete the RECON Campaign Signup Form for this event. Submissions are updated hourly on our Signup Status Page.
  2. Keep your power supply plugged in at all times when not in use.
  3. Make sure RECON laptop is fully charged well in advance of the event.
  4. Print this page and links and practice finding field prior to event.

Feel free to contact the RECON leadership team anytime by emailing tnorecon-org@mailman.boulder.swri.edu.

Observation Protocol

See our Full Campaign Observation Protocol Page for details on files to save:

  1. Position Video
  2. Event Video
  3. Sky Field Video
  4. Dark Field Video

You should configure VirtualDub to save files sequentially by using “Set Capture File” to save as C:/Users/RECON/Data/YYYYMMDD/YYYYMMDD_01. You should record the filenames and information about each file using the RECON Observation Logsheet.

Finder Charts

Finder chart for 20181224 event provided by Jerry Bardecker using Guide 9
Finder chart provided by Leiva

Image of Starfield

Starfield image for 20181224 event provided by Keller and Strauss at senseup 128x
Starfield image for 20181224 event provided by Keller and Strauss at senseup 32x

Post-Event Details

If you participate in this optional event, we request that you Report Your Observations. This includes completing the Campaign Observation Report Form (below), saving an electronic version of your log sheet, and uploading both videos and observation log to SwRI in Boulder.

We need all teams to complete the RECON Campaign Observation Report Form within one week of the event. To view reports from teams from throughout the network, check out the Event Reporting Status Page.