Just before midnight on Sunday, October 18 (October 19 UT), RECON will be conducting its second full network campaign involving Centaur 2007 RG283. The predicted centerline for this event is closer to the northern portion of the network (with a 1-sigma uncertainty of 684 km), but all RECON sites will provide valuable data for probing the region around 2007 RG283 for moons and rings. All RECON sites and other participants are asked to complete a Pre-Event Confirmation Form by Friday, October 9 so that we can provide any assistance as needed.

Predicted Centerline for 2007 RG283

This past August, roughly a dozen RECON team members supported the Lassen Volcanic Park Dark Sky Festival in northeastern California.  During this three day event, RECON teammembers from Goldendale, The Dalles, Susanville, Greenville, Quincy, Reno, and Kingman helped with both daytime solar viewing and nighttime telescope viewing at the Loomis Visitor Center within the park. RECON participants were enthusiastic about returning to the event again next year both as an opportunity to share our project with the public and as a chance to reconnected in person.

RECON joined several astronomy organizations at Loomis Visitor Center.

Buck Bateson from Susanville sets up solar scope in front of RECON Booth

Bob Yoesle from Goldendale speaks with Park Ranger Kevin Sweeney about solar astronomy

Lou Lofton from Reno talks about RECON with park visitor

On the evening of Tuesday, July 14, just a half day after the New Horizons spacecraft successfully flew by Pluto, seven RECON teams participated in an optional RECON campaign involving Weywot, a moon of classical Kuiper Belt Object Quaoar.  RECON teams from Ellensburg, The Dalles, Carson City, Gardnerville, Boulder City, Lake Havasu, and Yuma joined six other teams affiliated with the International Occultation Timing Association (IOTA) in this predicted occultation event.

Team members in Yuma were joined by reporter Amanda Solliday during this event. Her story on the RECON Project was aired today on KAWC – Colorado River Public Media and will be featured across the state of Arizona on KJZZ on Monday, July 20.

During last Friday’s media conference, the New Horizons Team released the image below showing troughs and pits in the icy plains of a region of Pluto now known as Tombaugh Regio.  Visit http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/ for updates and additional information.

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

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!