Pluto Occultation: 18 March 2007 |
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Pluto Occultation: 18 March 2007 |
 Mar 18 2007, 01:27 PM
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#1
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Member  Group: Members Posts: 529 Joined: 19-February 05 Member No.: 173  |
Reports from New Horizons co-investigator Cathy Olkin at the WIYN 3.5m telescope on Kitt Peak
in Arizona confirm that this morning's stellar occultation by Pluto was successfully observed there. Tedd von Hippel at McDonald reports he and Eliot Young were fighting clouds in Texas. Numerous other sites were participating. Scorecard results should follow over the next hours and days. |
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Mar 18 2007, 01:49 PM
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#2
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 Member Group: Members Posts: 903 Joined: 30-January 05 Member No.: 162 |
Nice to have a good occultation cross an existing facility with such a large aperture and high quality instruments. I wonder if any useful occultations might be seen from NH in the next several years?
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Mar 18 2007, 02:04 PM
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#3
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Member Group: Members Posts: 529 Joined: 19-February 05 Member No.: 173 |
Occultation expert and NH Deputy Project Scientist Leslie Young is actually charged with checking
that out, both for potential LORRI (visible light) and Alice (UV) studies. Odds are long (until Pluto gets big in the windshield ca. 2015, but we will know of any such "cruise science" events along the way by 2008. |
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Mar 18 2007, 07:09 PM
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#4
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 Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8783 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
Alan, will these observations shed any light on the long-anticipated "collapse" of Pluto's atmosphere? I can't see any way to measure composition or temperature here, but is there a legacy baseline of density data to compare the results of the occultation?
-------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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Mar 18 2007, 08:15 PM
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#5
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Newbie Group: Members Posts: 16 Joined: 10-March 06 Member No.: 700 |
Alan, at what time did WIYN see the occultation? We were observing at Fan Mt. (near Charlottesville) Virginia (at K-band in the morning twilight) and may have caught a graze of the atmosphere, but did not appear to be in the shadow at all. The predicted path of Pluto's shadow should have been very much the same over Fan as it was over Kitt Peak.
-Anne |
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Mar 18 2007, 09:43 PM
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#6
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Member Group: Members Posts: 529 Joined: 19-February 05 Member No.: 173 |
Nprev-- The occultation gives a number density profile; knowing the
mean molecular weight (28 amu for N2 dominating), and using the perfect gas law, one can also derive a temperature profile. These can be compared to the 1985, 1988, 2002 and 2006 events to time trend the atmospheric behavior and compare to models like Hansen & Paige (1996). -Alan |
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Mar 18 2007, 09:45 PM
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#7
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Member Group: Members Posts: 529 Joined: 19-February 05 Member No.: 173 |
Anne- Cathy didn't tell me the times but you could email her; just now
she should be on the flight home to DEN from AZ. I hope you got it too. -Alan |
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Mar 18 2007, 10:57 PM
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#8
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8783 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
Interesting, and I understand now...thanks, Alan!
-------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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