Congratulations to the IOTA community for their tremendous effort in capturing a binary Trojan asteroid on October 21, 2013. Shown below are preliminary profiles for Patroclus and its companion Menoetius.
Preliminary profile of binary Trojans asteroid
Visit http://www.asteroidoccultation.com/observations/Results/ for more details!
Below is a chord diagram from observations collected on October 17 for (339) Dorothea by RECON team members in Gardnerville, Carson City, Reno, Quincy, and Greenville and other contributing IOTA members. Great job all!
Thanks to Jim Bean, Jerry Bardecker, Marc Buie, and the entire IOTA community who were able to contribute to the recent Patroclus campaign! We look forward to upcoming results from last Sunday’s observation of this binary Trojan asteroid.
Looking forward, the next official RECON observation will be (176) Iduna on Friday evening, November 8, just after 10PM Pacific Standard Time! 
On August 23, RECON sites from Northern California to Bishop successfully recorded an occultation by (489) Comacina. Participants in Tulelake, Fall River Mills, Susanville, Greenville, Quincy, Portola, and Bishop all measured the occultation event. The chord diagram below compiles RECON data and observations from other IOTA members to provide an estimate of the asteroid size and shape. For more asteroid occultation results from North America, visit http://www.asteroidoccultation.com/observations/Results/.
Chord profile for (489) Comacina recorded on August 23, 2013
Unfortunately, heavy smoke from the Rim Fire burning in Yosemite Park obscured the skies for observers in Reno, Carson City, Gardnerville, Yerington, and Hawthorne. The image below shows a daytime shot from Carson City during this smoky time!
Daytime image of smoke in Carson City from Rim Fire in Yosemite
Looking forward to Comacina event this Friday evening, August 23, just after 11PM Pacific Time. The asteroid will be passing from north to south over most all our current RECON sites!
For more information on the event, visit the Observation Campaign page.
PI Marc Buie will be participating in the campaign from Tonopah, Nevada. Co-PI John Keller will be observing along with the team in Bishop, California.
Good luck to all. Feel free to reply to this blog post below!
A subset of the RECON network self-organized last week to measure an occultation by (2258) Viipuri the night of Friday, August 2 (August 3 UT). Observers in Susanville, Greenville, Quincy, Portola, Carson City, and Gardnerville all participated.
Starting at 04:52:07UT, Buck Bateson in Susanville was ecstatic to see the target star drop in brightness for under 5 seconds. Below is a preliminary lightcurve that Jim Bean has generated from the Susanville data.
At the same time, Jim and others recorded anomalous but less conclusive data from a location roughly four miles south of Portola. Meanwhile, approximately 40 seconds prior to this, Jerry Bardecker in Gardnerville measured a half second drop in intensity for the target star.
Before making a conclusive interpretation, we plan to take more time to reanalyze the data from all of the sites that contributed to this campaign. However, it appears that Susanville and (possibly) Portola recorded main body of asteroid while Gardnerville may have recorded a smaller object orbiting along with Viipuri.
Thanks to all who have contributed to this campaign! More to come!!!
On the heals of our Mikhailov event, we are hoping for better weather this evening from Reno down to Bishop! The event is just after 10PM Pacific Time on Wednesday, July 15.
For more details, visit the Phocaea event on our observation campaign page.
The RECON was poised and prepared for our Mikhailov campaign last Thursday morning just after midnight. From Fall River, California, to Gardnerville, Nevada, 11 inch telescope were all pointed to the target star field high in the southern sky. Shown to the right are Warren and Red all set up on Portola, California.
Unfortunately, reports came in early from Gardnerville and Carson City that they were clouded out the entire evening. Just as the event window opened, clouds from the same system reached Reno and Portola. However, in the northern part of the network, the skies held and successful recordings were acquired by Fall River, Susanville, Greenville, and Quincy.
Given that predictions placed the shadows path in Carson City and Gardnerville, the weather got the best of this campaign effort. However, in TNO occultation events (which we are practicing for) uncertainties will be greater and if the event had occurred in the northern part of the network, we would have captured it. As with all ground based astronomy, we are always dependent upon the weather!
Clouds or no clouds, great job to all who were able to participate in this campaign!
We are excited for our second RECON campaign occurring this Wednesday evening/Thursday morning. The event is just after midnight, with Mikhailov’s shadow passing by the RECON network between 7:29UT and 7:33UT July 11.
For more details, visit the Mikhailov event on our observation campaign page.
We also encourage participants to provide updates on how the event is going by:
Good luck to all!!! John and Marc
Happy Fourth of July!
This month, the RECON network will be observing three different occultation events involving Main Belt Asteroids. Because we know the orbits of these objects better than TNOs, the predicted uncertainties for the shadow paths are lower. While all in the network are welcome and encouraged to participate and practice on all three events, we are specifically asking smaller subsets of the network to record data so that we can demonstrate the ability of the RECON to detect three occultation events this month. Events are summarized below along with links to the information page for each:
2013 July 11, (1910) Mikhailov – CENTRAL region (Burney/Fall River, Susanville, Greenville, Quincy, Portola, Reno, Carson City, and Yerington)
2013 July 16, (25) Phocaea – SOUTHERN region (Reno, Carson City, Yerington, Hawthorne, Tonopah, and Bishop)
2013 July 30, (387) Aquitania – NORTHERN region (Burney/Fall River, Cedarville, Tulelake)
Please don’t hesitate to post questions and thoughts on this blog using the “Leave a reply” link below or by going to the individual event pages linked above!