During its flyby through the Pluto system this past Tuesday morning, the New Horizons spacecraft gathered a tremendous dataset of that will transform our understanding of this largest known Kuiper Belt Object.  More images and science results will be released in a media briefing at 1 p.m. EDT this Friday, July 17. It will take 16 months to download all of the data that was collected this past week, so it should be an exciting year as more and more of this amazing planetary system is revealed.

Image of Pluto taken July 13, one day before encounter.

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Icy Mountains on Pluto

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Mountain in a Moat on the Youthful Surface of Charon

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Stay tuned as the New Horizons Spacecraft closes in on Pluto!  Below is an image of Pluto taken by New Horizons on July 11. For more images and up-to-date information, visit http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/. This is an extremely exciting moment for New Horizons team members, including RECON PI Marc Buie who is currently at the spacecraft control center at the Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland.

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

During the flyby, New Horizons will be out of radio contact with Earth as it executes the carefully choreographed sequence of commands between July 14 03:17 UT and July 15 00:53UT. For those on the West Coast, that’s from 8:17PM PDT on Monday (7/13) to 5:53PM PDT on Tuesday (7/14).

Coincidentally, an occultation by classical KBO Quaoar and its moon Weywot is predicted for July 15 at 05:03 UT, just four hours after the anticipated link up with New Horizons after the flyby. Tuesday is looking to be a banner day for the Kuiper Belt!

Stay tuned over the next 10 days as New Horizons spacecraft approaches Pluto!!!  Closest approach occurs on Tuesday, July 14, 2015 at 7:49:57 a.m. EDT.  You can follow along before, during, and after the flyby through the NASA New Horizons Website and the mission website run by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory where Marc will be working through end of July.

You can also follow along each day by checking out Pluto in a Minute!

Finally, we encourage RECON team members to contribute photos of how bright their communities would appear at noon on Pluto by checking out Pluto Time.

Over 50 RECON communities are geared up for our first full RECON occultation campaign! Classical KBO 2001 FE193 is predicted to occult a 15.8 magnitude star in the constellation Virgo around 11:50 PM PDT/MST on the evening of Wednesday, June 10, 2015 (2015 June 11 06:50 UT). Recently updated predictions place the centerline for the event to the south of the network, but uncertainty estimates indicate that RECON is well within reach of the shadow.

Predicted shadow path for 2001 FE193 (1-sigma uncertainty of 7,572 km)

Clear skies are predicted over most of Washington, Oregon, and Arizona, while conditions should be improving in California and central Nevada around the time of the event.

This campaign represents the culmination of three years of recruiting, equipping, training, and planning. Needless to say, we are extremely enthusiastic to learn how things go during this first full functional test of the network.

Good luck to all of our teams!

After almost three years of planning, recruitment, and training, we are coming up on our first full RECON campaign event!  On the evening of Wednesday, June 10 local time (11 June, 2015 around 06:50 UT), classical KBO 2001 FE193 will occult star UC4-419-056744. For more information on this event, visit our 2001 FE193 Event Page.

While the 1-sigma cross-track uncertainty in the shadow position for this event is currently over 7,500 km, data recently collected using the 4-m telescope at Kitt Peak will be used to update this prediction prior to the event. Regardless of the uncertainty, this campaign represents the first functional test of the full RECON network and will provide great observing experience for all 50+ RECON teams and any other observers who join in the campaign. To indicate that your team is prepared to participate, please have a representative from your observing team complete a Pre-Event Confirmation Form.

The RECON Project reached a significant milestone this past week. Through a highly successful Southern RECON Training Workshop, sixty-five enthusiastic and engaged educators and amateur astronomers participated in an intensive four-day training workshop held in Kingman, Arizona. These representatives are now fully prepared to return to their home communities to recruit and work with local team members on our citizen science effort to study the outer solar system.

Lake Havasu City teachers show off their telescope

Team members from Yuma wire up their camera

Amateur astronomers from Blythe show off camera signed by Rock Mallin

The workshop focused on the science of occultation astronomy and provided hands-on experience using RECON telescope and camera equipment both during the daytime and through three nighttime observing sessions.

RECON is grateful to the Kingman Unified School District for hosting the workshop

Participants model Earth’s motion through kinesthetic astronomy activity

Participants also learned about data analysis opportunities and classroom activities to engage students and community members in the project.

Team members practice using RECON equipment under night sky

In an event known as an appulse, team members participated in an observation campaign involving a main belt asteroid just grazing a distant star on the final night of the workshop.

Group photograph from Southern RECON Training Workshop held in Kingman Arizona.

The workshop involved representatives from almost half of the full RECON network, with 16 new teams and 8 teams from the pilot project. Participants came from as far south as San Luis, Arizona (along the border with Mexico) to Brewster within 100 miles of the border with Canada. Teams from California (Calipatria, Blythe, Idyllwild, Lone Pine, Bishop, Lee Vining, and Greenville) and Arizona (Yuma, Parker, Lake Havasu, River Valley, Bullhead City, and Kingman/Dolan Springs) were joined by participants from Nevada (Laughlin, Boulder City/Searchlight, Henderson, Indian Springs, Beatty, Tonopah, Hawthorne, Yerington, Gardnerville, Carson City, and Reno) along with teams from Maupin Oregon and Brewster Washington.

In just under a month, the Northern RECON Training Workshop will prepare 25 additional teams from Washington and Oregon.

Planetary Scientists Marc Buie and John Keller are excited to announce the expansion of RECON — the Research and Education Collaborative Occultation Network — across the entire western United States! The full network will involve at least 55 telescope sites operated by teachers, students, and volunteers from 60 communities located in the rain shadow of the Cascade and Sierra Nevada mountain ranges and along the Colorado River.

Over the next five years, the communities shown on the map below will be involved in this cutting-edge, NSF-funded citizen science astronomy research endeavor to measure and characterize Kuiper Belt Objects located in the outer Solar System. Project Leads Buie and Keller are honored to have visited all of the sites shown on the map during recruitment of the pilot network in fall 2012 and the expanded network in fall 2014.

With this expansion, the project will engage over 60 high schools, 12 colleges and community colleges, 7 astronomy clubs, and 2 astronomy education centers. NSF funding for RECON will be used to provide camera systems to all 54 sites and 46 CPC-1100 telescopes to the communities shown on the map in green. To sites shown in blue, an additional 8 telescopes are being provided by the following RECON collaborators:

• Central Washington University Gear Up Program (2)
• Columbia Basin College Robert & Elisabeth Moore Observatory
• Oregon State University SMILE Program
• Sisters Astronomy Club
• The Bateson Observatory
• Western Nevada College Jack C. Davis Observatory
• Guided Discoveries – Astrocamp

Telescopes and cameras will be delivered to new RECON communities over the next month. During the spring, representatives from each community will receive training at workshops held in Kingman, Arizona, and Pasco, Washington. By early May, the network will be fully prepared to conduct up to eight coordinated observation campaigns of Kuiper Belt Objects each year through 2019.

Buie and Keller are also grateful for volunteer collaborators such as Jerry Bardecker from Gardnerville and others associated with the International Occultation Time Association (IOTA) who are providing significant contributions to the project and joining in RECON occultation campaign events to create an even stronger network (current sites shown in purple on map). Individuals interested in learning more about opportunities to participate are encouraged to complete a RECON Individual Interest Form.

Welcome to all of our new RECON students, teachers, and community members!!!