2014 MU69 "Ultima Thule" flyby, For discussion of the encounter as it happens Options

[elakdawalla]

It's only 10 days now until the "Core" phase of the 2014 MU69 flyby begins! I thought it was time for a new thread. Carry on discussing distant observations of other KBO worlds in the KBO encounters thread, and use this one for MU69 until after the departure phase is officially over on 8 January.

I'll be posting a "What to Expect" article next week.

[David Wright]

New Horizons at Pluto was a triumph for Alan Stern's team, and NH at Ultima Thule is the cherry at the top. But there are thousands (tens of thousands?) of KBOs and only 1 New Horizons. In retrospect, NH images validate the occultation results, and one might be tempted to say that, based on those occultation results only, there is a 90% (or whatever) likelihood that Ultima Thule is a contact binary.

So what does this mean for occultation measurements going forward? And isn't this something that amateurs could assist with? What percent of KBOs are contact binaries?

[HSchirmer]

But there are thousands (tens of thousands?) of KBOs and only 1 New Horizons.

So what does this mean for occultation measurements going forward? And isn't this something that amateurs could assist with?

What percent of KBOs are contact binaries?

That sounds like an excellent idea for citizen science outreach -

Found and fund a "semester at NASA fellowship" dedicated to calculating asteroid, centaur and KBO occultations of stars which occur during the next six months.

Promote that "watch list" and organize monthly dark sky "picket fence parties" where astronomy clubs and collegiate/university programs deploy multiple scopes to observe the occultations.

[WTW]

That sounds like an excellent idea for citizen science outreach -

Found and fund a "semester at NASA fellowship" dedicated to calculating asteroid, centaur and KBO occultations of stars which occur during the next six months.

Promote that "watch list" and organize monthly dark sky "picket fence parties" where astronomy clubs and collegiate/university programs deploy multiple scopes to observe the occultations.

I don't mean to throw cold water on what seems like fundamentally an excellent idea, but I think people are underestimating what it takes to do meaningful science on KBOs. There is a reason that the Kuiper belt wasn't even discovered until the 1990s.
Careful research, planning, coordinating, training, properly equipping, analyzing of data (e.g., removal of false positives), etc. were all required for what Marc Buie did -- not just carrying some telescopes into a field and looking for a relatively bright star to blink. I recommend taking a look at what Dr. Buie had to do -- there was a reason he had to wait for the Gaia 2 data release as well as use the most powerful telescopes on and off the planet before he could do his occultation detections.

I think the same goes for essentially any of the smaller of the 1000 or so KBOs that have been discovered so far. It wouldn't be impossible, but it would take some management and specifying (and maybe supplying) minimum equipment requirements, calibration and timing standards, software tools, data reporting, etc. etc.

As for asteroid occultations, NASA and amateur astronomers have been actively searching for asteroids, and there are several projects under way if people want to help out. See, for example:
https://occultations.org/
https://occultations.org/observing/software/
http://www.asteroidoccultation.com/
http://www.asteroidoccultation.com/observations/
etc.

Having said all that, one might be able to set up a project to do the same thing that was done for MU69: do "reverse orbit" calculations to find where in the sky KB objects that will come close to New Horizon's trajectory would be in the sky today (and in coming months).
But don't wait for the NASA extended mission review to find possible follow-on targets for NH...

An area where citizen scientists could probably contribute:
There are currently multiple surveys being done (or getting started) by ground-based telescopes for various types of transients -- typically supernovae and exoplanet transits. These often aren't looking in the region of the sky where KBOs are most likely to be found, but some are.
So it might be feasible to organize something like an online "galaxy zoo" project for non-astronomers to try to detect KBOs in that sometimes nightly survey data, using some of the same techniques and software algorithms that Marc has developed for MU69.

Does anyone know of such a project already underway or being proposed?

>>EDIT 3 Jan 2019: Added the following exciting project dedicated to citizen scientists measuring stellar occultations by Trans-Neptunian Objects, already up and running:

The RECON project:
http://tnorecon.net/about-us/about-the-project/

From their website:
RECON — the Research and Education Collaborative Occultation Network — will involve students, teachers, amateur astronomers, and interested community members in a citizen science astronomy research project to study the outer solar system. We are providing telescopes, camera equipment, and training to over 40 schools and education centers across the Western United States so students and teachers from these communities can help us determine the sizes of objects out past Neptune through occultation measurements. To learn more about RECON, visit http://tnorecon.net/

Funded by the National Science Foundation, RECON is run by planetary scientists Marc Buie from Southwest Research Institute and John Keller from California Polytechnic State University.

You can sign up to join their project or request more information at
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc...6b7X9g/viewform