This Week’s Spotlight: Calipatria, CA

Posted on February 22, 2017 by iliannasalas

The RECON network is made of over 55 communities on the Western United States ranging from Washington to Arizona, made of teachers, students, volunteers, and countless community members who are enthusiastic about science. This year, we are going to be featuring our communities so that we can get to know the unique cities and people that are part of the RECON network.

Calipatria, CA

This week’s feature is Calipatria, CA! This community joined us in November 2014 and is made up of teachers and students from the Astronomy Club at Calipatria High School led by Keitha McCandless. Check out Calipatria’s Facebook profile to learn more about them!

RECON Calipatria

To explore the full list of RECON communities, visit our communities page.

If your community is interested in creating a profile either on social media or through the RECON website, email us at recon@calpoly.edu.

Not the best night for occultation astronomy!

Posted on February 16, 2017 by John

Our RECON event this Friday evening involving Centaur 07RG283 is going to be challenging to begin with, given that that target star (UC4-683-022040 in Perseus) is a very dim object at magnitude 16.3. While still within reach of our telescope-camera system, clear skies will be required.

Unfortunately, as the Clear Sky Clock sky forecast map below shows, clear skies this Friday evening will be hard to come by! In a rare reversal, sky conditions in Washington could be marginally better than the rest of the network, although even here things will be dicey. Such are the challenges of ground-based astronomy research. While we anticipate most sites will be clouded out, we appreciated all teams completing the RECON Campaign Observation Report Form, which will be available for one week following the event time.

Sky forecast map at event time for 07RG283 event.

This Week’s Spotlight: Quincy, CA

Posted on February 1, 2017 by iliannasalas

The RECON network is made of over 55 communities on the Western United States ranging from Washington to Arizona, made of teachers, students, volunteers, and countless community members who are enthusiastic about science. This year, we are going to be feautiring our communities so that we can get to know the unique cities and people that are part of the RECON network.

Quincy, CA

This week’s feature is Quincy, CA. Quincy has been part of the RECON project since the start of our pilot project in Fall 2012. Charles Arrowsmith teaches astronomy at Feather River Community College and leads the Quincy RECON team. Students and teachers from both the college and Quincy High School are involved, and the Quincy site was featured in a ScienceNation Video about the project. The Quincy team maintains an active RECON page on their Google+ site. Check it out to learn more about this community!

To explore the full list of RECON communities, visit our communities page.

If your community is interested in creating a profile either on social media or through the RECON website, email us at recon@calpoly.edu.

What’s in a name?

Posted on January 21, 2017 by John

Our next RECON event this coming Monday evening involves Centaur 12CG! A challenging component of this event is that the target will be rising low in the eastern sky. Note that this won’t give our teams a ton of time to lock on the star field.

We wanted to take this opportunity to talk for a second about the naming convention for TNOs and other minor planets. For all of our previous events, you may have noticed that objects had names like 14UT114 and 08FC76, while our event this week does not have a number at the end. Let’s break this down.

The name 12CG indicates that this object was the seventh minor planet discovered in the two week period between February 1 – February 15, 2012. The first two digits (12) represent the year of discovery and the first letter (C) indicates the half-month of discovery. The letter A is for objects discovered between January 1-15, B is for January 16-31, and C for February 1-15. Note that the letter “I” is skipped, resulting in Y representing the 24th half-month of December 16-31. The second character (G) is the order of discover, with A being the first object in that period and G being the seventh. Here again, the letter “I” is not used, so this naming convention can be used for the first 25 objects discovered in a given half-month.

So why do most TNOs end with a number while 12CG does not? After the 25 object discovered in a half month,a number is indexed at the end of the name and second alpha character cycles back through the alphabet. Thus, while the 25th discovered object between February 1 – February 15 would be 12CZ, the 26th object would be named 12CA1, and the 27th would be 12CB1.

Ready to quiz yourself? Try 14UT114:

14U = Object was discovered between October 16-31, 2014
T114 = We’ve cycled 114 times through the 25 letters of the alphabet (minus the letter “I”), or 114 x 25 = 2,850 times. The letter T indicates it is the 19th object after these 2,850 prior objects. So the object is the 2,869th discovery of this half-month.

How about 08FC76? . . . yup, the 1,903rd minor discovered between March 16-31, 2008. For more information and clarification, check out the following Wikipage on provisional designation in astronomy.

Good luck to all of our teams this Monday evening!!!

RECON 2016 | Year in Review Video

Posted on December 30, 2016 by iliannasalas

In honor of the new year, we’re sharing our favorite memories from 2016! Thank you all for your dedication and continued participation. Here’s to another successful year!

Students brave cold to reach for stars

Posted on December 26, 2016 by John

Check out a very nice article in the Nugget News on the adventures of the Sisters RECON team during our December campaign event earlier this month!

Happy Winter Solstice, 2016!

Posted on December 21, 2016 by John

On this Winter Solstice, the RECON Team wanted to wish all a happy holiday season!!!

RECON Team Meeting in Carson City, August 2016

We are extremely grateful to all of our RECON students, teachers, amateur astronomers and community members who have contributed to this year’s activities. Below is a quick RECON Year in Review!

January – First campaign (03WL7) clouded out by precursor to Snowzilla blizzard
February – Implementation of new cwrsync tool to upload video files completed
March – Manuscript on RECON Network published in The Astronomical Journal
- THE RESEARCH AND EDUCATION COLLABORATIVE OCCULTATION NETWORK: A SYSTEM FOR COORDINATED TNO OCCULTATION OBSERVATIONS
May – A busy campaign month!
- Two campaigns on the same night (99HR11 and 02GZ32) . . .
- along with a third campaign later that month (99CY118)
June – Our final campaign of the 2015-16 school year (08JO41)
July – Two optional events involving Quaoar
August – 70+ team members join for RECON Team Meeting in Carson City
September – Implementation of automated campaign signup and reporting forms
October – First campaign event of the new academic year (12UT68)
November – Early morning campaign before Thanksgiving (08FC76)
December – Final event of year (14UT114) mostly clouded out but second manuscript published in The Astronomical Journal
- RESULTS FROM THE 2014 NOVEMBER 15TH MULTI-CHORD STELLAR OCCULTATION BY THE TNO (229762) 2007 UK126

All together, we attempted 8 full network campaigns, set up essential data infrastructure for RECON campaigns, and published 2 manuscripts in The Astronomical Journal. With most video files now uploaded into the RECON database, we are currently busy analyzing video from the above events as we prepare for our upcoming January 2017 campaigns.

In addition to our team meeting in Nevada, John had the pleasure of visiting sites in Oregon, Northern California, Owens Valley, and along the Colorado River while Marc visited sites in both Washington and Arizona. We also has a new team join from Wildwood School in Los Angeles. Throughout all of our interactions, we continue to be impressed by the dedication and enthusiasm of our RECON communities!

Wishing you the warmest of holidays!!!

John, Marc, Ilianna, Diana, Matthew, Audrey, and Jeralyn

RECON Opportunities in January 2017

Posted on December 18, 2016 by John

Most of the RECON network was clouded, rained, or snowed out during our last event on December 11, 2016. A handful of sites in Southern Oregon/Northern California and Southern California/Arizona were able to record the star field and are uploading their video data for analysis, but the campaign was definitely limited by poor sky conditions for this final campaign of the 2016 calendar year.

Given the challenges that the network has had with clouds and such, we wanted to announce two promising optional campaigns in early January, which are also great practice opportunities to prepare for our next official campaign later next month.

Next Full Campaign on 23 January around 05:51 UT

Looking forward to 2017, our next full network campaign will be Monday evening, January 23 around 9:51PM PST / 10:51PM MST. With a 1-sigma uncertainty of just over 1,100 km, this campaign involving Centaur (471512) 12CG is our highest probability TNO opportunity for the month of January at 36%. We will be creating an event page shortly, and the sign-up form for this official campaign will go live on December 23.

Large Classical KBO on 2 January around 07:59 UT (OPTIONAL)

Prediction for Classical KBO Sila-Nunam on 2017 January 2 UT

Estimated as somewhere between 220-550 km in diameter, the shadow path of large Classical KBO (79360) Sila-Nunam is predicted to pass over the RECON network, with a 1-sigma uncertainty of just over 2,000 km. If the shadow does pass over RECON, we will definitely detect it even if not all telescope sites are able to observe the event occurring roughly 24 hours into the New Year. We strongly encourage any and all teams that are up for this event to give it a go, especially if weather forecasts look good. However, we didn’t want to push the network too hard after our Thanksgiving campaign event, so this will be an optional event. You will be able to sign up for this optional RECON event starting next week.

Regional Multi-Chord Observation on 7 January around 06:45 UT (OPTIONAL)

Prediction for Main Belt Asteroid (362) Havnia on 2017 January 7 UT

Equally exciting is a unique multi-chord opportunity involving Main Belt Asteroid (362) Havnia on Friday evening, January 6, around 10:45PM PST / 11:45PM MST. As shown on the IOTA prediction map to the left, the slow-moving shadow will travel from south to north. Depending upon how far west or east the shadow lands, all RECON sites in Arizona, California, Nevada, and possibly Oregon can help contribute to this multi-chord observation opportunity. Because the event will not involve telescope sites in Washington, we are announcing this as an optional regional campaign. Many IOTA members are planning to observe, and you are strongly encouraged to contribute this research effort and gain more practice time. You can sign up for this event using OccultWatcher, and a RECON sign-up form will also be available next week.

Cloud Forecast for 14UT114

Posted on December 10, 2016 by John

Cloud cover will likely pose challenges for many of our telescope sites during tonight’s event on Sunday morning, December 11 around 08:55 UT. Teams south of Reno and along the Colorado River and around have the best shot at recording this event. To see sky predictions for individual RECON sites, you can visit our Sky Conditions Page.

National Weather Service cloud cover forecast for Saturday night/Sunday morning.

Despite weather conditions, our telescope teams will keep an eye on their local skies and do their best tonight. Following the campaign event, we ask all teams to complete a RECON Campaign Observation Report Form. This link will be active for one week following the event.

Final 2016 RECON Event

Posted on December 1, 2016 by John

We wanted to provide a quick update on how things went last week during our Thanksgiving RECON campaign and also provide a heads up on our final event of 2016.

November 23 Event Involving 08FC76

With the exception of Tulelake, California, weather got in the way of observing for all telescope sites from Oroville, Washington down to Carson City, Nevada. Unfortunately, clouds did not part in Central Oregon until after the event. However, clear skies prevailed for our 20 sites from Yerington, Nevada south to Yuma, Arizona. Based upon reports, 15 of these sites successfully acquired the target field and recorded the event, while 5 sites encountered technical issues, primarily involving power and alignment issues. For the next few days, you can view reports from all RECON teams on our Event Reporting Status Page.

Teams that acquired data are currently uploading video data to Southwest Research Institute in Boulder for further analysis this month.

December 11 Involving 14UT114

Our final campaign of 2016 will be Saturday night/Sunday morning, December 10-11. The centerline prediction for Centaur 14UT114 passes over Maupin, Oregon.

Prediction for 14UT114 on 11 December, 2016 UT

With a 1,200-km uncertainty, over 50 RECON telescope sites from Oroville, Washington to Blythe, California are in the 1-sigma shadow zone. All teams are crossing their fingers for clear weather for this occultation opportunity, which currently has a 37% probability of detection by the network. All RECON teams are asked to submit the RECON Campaign Signup Form by this weekend. Submitted reports can be viewed on our Signup Status Page.