Shortly after arriving at Kitt Peak National Observatory, the RECON team toured the observatory and became familiar with the telescopes and area.  While touring the Peak, we (Lake Shank and Shelby Brown), along with Jim Bean, Red Sumner, and Marc Buie,  also became familiar with the 4-meter telescope.  We will be using it to locate fields of KBOs for future RECON events!  The dome in the picture above will be where the team will be observing and collecting data for the next few nights.  Updates will be posted tonight or early tomorrow morning concerning data collection and telescope operation.

On the way to catch our flight landing in Phoenix, Arizona to meet Marc Buie. The team was excited to start working at Kitt Peak National Observatory!

While becoming familiar with the site, Marc Buie showed us around the 4-meter telescope. Part of the tour was standing very close to the telescope.  The picture above was taken inside of the dome.  Up close the telescope looks huge compared to the traditional 12-inch RECON telescope.

There are tons of interesting telescopes at Kitt Peak National Observatory.  These include a variety of different sized telescopes such as a 1.3 meter, a 2.1 meter and a solar and radio telescope. We are eager to collect data tonight and tomorrow night!Marc Buie (pictured here with Red Sumner on the right) helped us to understand how the 4-meter telescope rotates to different points in the sky.  It turns out that multiple parts of the telescope itself and the building rotates to observe different parts of the sky.

If you have any questions or comments, a google+ hangout will be hosted on Wednesday from 3:15-4:15 PM Pacific Time.  Feel free to ask questions, post comments, or get to know any of the RECON team members.

Carson High School teacher Jim Bean, mentor Red Sumner, and students Shelby and Lake will be helping Marc Buie on a three day observing run at Kitt Peak National Observatory this week.  They will be using the 4-meter telescope to acquire fields of KBOs to help us refine predictions for future KBO occultation events. The group met up with Marc at the airport in Phoenix this evening and they are currently headed up to the observatory located 56 miles southwest of Tucson Arizona.

The team plans provide updates here on the tnorecon.net blog.  We encourage you to interact with Shelby, Lake, Jim, Red, and Marc by replying with questions and comments throughout the week. Also, we will be hosting a google+ hangout from the mountain on Wednesday from 3:15-4:15 PM Pacific Time. Send your google+ id to recon@calpoly.edu  by noon that day if you would like to be invited to join the hangout.

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For those of you that might not have stayed up last Monday night or missed the coverage on TV, here are four images of the lunar eclipse as seen from Gardnerville. There were a few high clouds passing over the area during the event, but I managed to capture images during the better seeing periods. These are all captured with a 500mm mirror lens and a Nikon DSLR on a fixed tripod. The APS size sensor gives an equivalent focal length of approx. 750mm.

Occult Watcher (OW) is an extremely useful tool developed by the IOTA community for tracking and signing up to participate in occultation campaigns.  The software for OW has been installed on all of the Netbooks that were shipped out to our sites last month.

We have created two guides to help you sign up for our upcoming (1332) Marconia campaign:

Setting up Occult Watcher for the First Time

Signing up for an Event in Occult Watcher

Thanks in advance for using these two guides to sign up for the Marconia campaign. You can also send an email to recon@calpoly.edu if you have any questions or concerns about this procedure.

For more information on tonight’s lunar eclipse, visit:

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/27mar_tetrad/

I had a wonderful road trip the week of March 24 to our southern RECON sites.  Below is a map of the week-long trek to Bishop, Tonopah, Hawthorne, and Yerington.

Route of roadtrip made by John Keller during Spring 2014

First I met up with Adrian Sears in Bishop, California and spoke with his physics class and two chemistry classes on Tuesday morning, March 25. That afternoon, I drove over to Tonopah, Nevada and connected with Clair and Teralyn Blackburn, who had arranged for me to give a presentation to Dr. Tom Whalan’s physical science class at the high school. That evening, I gave a public talk at the school and showed the group how to use their Bahtinov mask to focus the telescope (unfortunately it was too cloudy for stargazing).

Photos from visit to Tonopah

Wednesday morning, I met with Dr. Whalan’s life science class and then headed over to Hawthorne, Nevada. It was spring break for their school district as well, but Katherine Trujillo organized a well-attended star party with over a dozen students and parents. We had clear skies and used the scope to look at Jupiter, the Orion Nebula, and other deep sky objects, and Kathy and I were able to get the Hawthorne camera working successfully with the new RECON netbook.

Thursday, I drove up to Yerington and met up with Todd Hunt, Scott Darrington, and Joanna Kuzia. Over 40 students and teachers joined us in the Yerington High School Library for a public talk and star party that night. The night was partially cloudy, but we were able to show the students Jupiter and Orion and also got some practice on telescope alignment, focusing, and identifying star fields.

Throughout the trip, I was extremely impressed with the questions and curiosity of the students I met and the dedication, teamwork, and enthusiasm of our team leaders!  I’m looking forward to my next visit!!!

We are receiving many reports back from teams throughout the RECON network that Netbooks have been arriving safely!  To support teams in becoming familiar with the Netbooks, we have duplicated the previous post on setting up your Netbook upon arrival and created two additional guides on using your Netbook to capture camera data and checking your camera settings. All of these procedures are best done in the comfort of a warm, lighted room where you can become familiar with the Netbook/camera combination and confirm that your camera settings are correct.  Please do not hesitate to let us know if there are any confusing points on the guides that we can help clarify or correct!  You can also navigate to the above guides by selecting the page labeled  RECON Guides under the Participant Resources menu topic. Coming soon is a guide on using OccultWatcher to sign up for campaign events!

Looking forward to hearing reports on how the Netbooks work with 2001XR254 this coming Sunday night/early Monday morning!