Through a collaboration with Dr. Marc Buie of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), who generously provided 12 CPC1100 systems for UVA and local observers, the Occultation Group at UVA organized an 18 telescope deployment in the +/- 3-sigma zone.
Milky way seen from northern most chord of the Kansas expedition. Credit: Andrey Moore.
Technical Details
This 18 telescope deployment proved to be a daunting logistical challenge. For us UVA observers, it was the first time we set up unmanned telescopes for a campaign to automatically collect data at event time. For the eight telescopes set up by the UVA group, seven were able to successfully collect data with one unmanned station unfortunately drifting off the star field before the event time.
Observer Overview
- Phillip “Teddy” Oakey and Keya Garg: Four CPC1100 telescopes (two unmanned)
- Andrey Moore: Two CPC1100 telescopes (one unmanned)
- Uday Kapoor: Two CPC1100 telescopes (one unmanned)
- Kai Getrost: One 20” personal telescope
- Gary Hug: One personal telescope
- Marc Buie: Two CPC1100 telescopes
- Vadim Nikitin: Two CPC1100 telescopes
- Brian Heimes and Chet Batterman: one CPC1100 Telescope
- Roger Venable: Three 14” telescopes.
Next Steps
As this was the final domestic occultation of this asteroid before the mission launches, all we have left to do is finish our analysis of the observations and compile a profile of the asteroid. More updates will come as we continue to profile this mission. We plan on releasing a vlog for the event in the coming weeks which will provide much more insight on our travel and data collection processes for this event.