Here's a photo of our Pluto occultation event team, taken during a meeting this morning on Kitt Peak. From left to right are me, Steve Peterson, Victor Herrero, Jesus Finol, Claude Plymate, and Don Jennings. We're standing in front of the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope. Strangely enough, Don and Claude used this solar telescope, which was built to observe the brightest star in our sky, to observe Pluto that evening. It took some ingenuity for them to accomplish this; for example, Claude used the primary lens from a cheap Celestron refractor as a focal reducer in the light path. Not only that, but they were observing in the near-infrared K-band, which also meant an even fainter target. Nevertheless they did obtain useful data.
This whole project has been a lot of fun and the data is still being analyzed, but we do know that our data using a 14" scope and cheap CCD closely matched that from the bigger scopes. Eventually it will (hopefully) be published in a paper somewhere.
During the meeting I also got a highly detailed insider's tour of the solar scope. We even got to observe Venus visually through it!
Some of the gear used for the Pluto event was similar to that currently in use on the New Horizons mission to Pluto, which is currently in the neighborhood of Jupiter and well on its way to the target planet.
Of course being on Kitt Peak is always a lot of fun, I can never tire of seeing domes of various sizes all over the place and "Quiet Please, Astronomers Sleeping" signs. Steve has been working at the Advanced Observing Program on Kitt Peak lately, so he was able to give us a tour of the dome that is used for that. It houses a 20" RC on a Paramount; my dream system.
I haven't had any time for imaging or observing lately but the Texas Star Party is coming soon. Two nights ago (Friday) was the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association meeting. I was elected to the Board of Directors as a "Member at Large" - perhaps they have noticed my ever-expanding torso. I also gave a brief talk during the meeting as it was members' night.
Last night was the Huachuca Astronomy Club meeting. I drove down but had to meet with a client before, and ended up missing the majority of the presentation by David Healy on his "Junk Bond Observatory". But I still managed to enjoy a little bit of it, and also got to chat with several other members who plan to attend TSP.
I have tons of work to do before heading out next week so probably not much astronomy will be happening until then.
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