Upcoming RECON Occultations

[Zach Schierl]

After a lull the past few months, observations for the RECON project are about to pick up steam. RECON is a collaborative science project involving ~40 telescopes positioned up and down the west coast observing Trojan asteroid occultations. The goal is to complement and support NASA's Lucy mission by better characterizing Trojan asteroid orbits, shapes, and sizes. 

Yakima is scheduled to observe 10 occultations between now and early April. The full list is below, however the details are subject to change as the predictions will be refined as more observations are made.

The first is this coming Monday (Jan 13) at 5:10 am. I plan to observe this occultation from my backyard (since the target star is relatively bright), beginning set-up around 4:30 am. If anyone is interested in joining to see how this work is done, let me know. (I don't drink coffee so BYO!) 

-Zach

Date (Local time of observation start, magnitude of target star, probability of occultation from Yakima, object name)

• Mon, Jan 13 (5:10 am, mag 14.04, <1%, 5209_Oloosson)

• Fri, Jan 17 (1:39 am, mag 15.97, 4%, 5209_Oloosson)

• Mon, Jan 20 (4:27 am, mag 15.42, 4%, 15440_Eioneus)

• Thu, Jan 23 (12:19 am, mag 16.39, 38%, 22014_99XQ96)

• Tue, Feb 4 (3:17 am, mag 13.93, 24%, 13183_96TW)

• Sun, Mar 2 (3:31 am, mag 16.07, 31%, 911_Agamemnon)

• Wed, Mar 12 (10:41 pm, mag 15.02, 5%, 7152_Euneus)

• Tue, Mar 18 (11:04 pm, mag 16.52, 13%, 4834_Thoas)

• Fri, Mar 21 (9:13 pm, mag 16.10, 10%, 23958_98VD30)

• Sat, Apr 5 (12:47 am, mag 15.77, 5%, 22149_00WD49)