6
Wednesday, December 21, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
Students brave cold to reach for stars
On the evening of
Saturday, December 10, nine
determined high school stu-
dents and three adult advisors
braved the elements to partici-
pate in a real science project
contributing to astronomi-
cal research. It was the lat-
est campaign of the Research
and Education Collaborative
Occultation Network
(RECON), of which Sisters is
a participating community.
RECON is a citizen-
science program developed
by Dr. Marc Buie of the
Southwest Research Institute
in Boulder, Colorado, and
Professor John Keller at
California Polytechnic State
University in San Luis
Obispo, California. Citizen
science is research conducted,
in whole or in part, by amateur
or nonprofessional scientists,
in this case, students and other
volunteers from communities
spaced 50 kilometers apart
from Oroville, Washington on
the Canadian border to Yuma,
Arizona near the Mexican
border.
The goal of RECON is to
investigate objects at the outer
regions of our solar system
beyond the orbit of Neptune.
Specifically, the effort is to
measure the size of these
trans-Neptunian objects, or
TNOs, using the method of
stellar occultation.
An occultation occurs
when one celestial body
moves in front of another,
temporarily hiding it from
view. In this case, a small,
far-off world moves in front
of a known star. The length
of time between when the star
winks out and when it reap-
pears is proportional to the
size of the obscuring object.
And that’s exactly what the
intrepid group of volunteers
was preparing to measure on
that cold, occasionally snowy,
Saturday night.
After finding a relatively
solid surface of packed snow,
a few of the students mounted
the school’s 11-inch comput-
erized telescope on the tripod
and locked it into position.
Other students then began
unpacking and attaching the
necessary ancillary equip-
ment, such as the finder scope
and hand controller. Next, the
camera, timing device and lap-
top computer were properly
wired together and plugged
into a portable battery which
also powered the telescope.
After it had enough time to
locate a sufficient number of
GPS satellites, the telescope
was able to calculate its geo-
graphic location on the earth.
It was now time to align the
telescope. Aided by a large
patch of stars in a fleetingly
clearing sky, two of the more
experienced students, Alex
Burroughs and Rylee Funk,
chose three prominent stars in
different parts of the sky for
the alignment process. Shortly
after the position of the third
star was entered, the hand-
held control paddle came back
with “alignment confirmed.”
The team was in business.
The focus of attention
this night was TNO Centaur
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PHOTO PROVIDED
This picture is a screen shot from the video file showing the star field that was being imaged. The white dots are
stars. The red arrow points to the target star that is about 350 times fainter than naked-eye detection
14UT114 and a very dim
15.7-magnitude star in the
constellation of Perseus.
Would the Sisters team, or any
of the other 60-plus participat-
ing communities along the
eastern spine of the Cascade
and Sierra Nevada moun-
tain ranges from northern
Washington to Arizona see
the star wink out?
The students success-
fully pointed the telescope to
the area in the sky where the
action would take place. By
that time, however, clouds
were on the increase, mak-
ing the dimmer stars hard to
see. Light from a nearly full
moon also added to the prob-
lem. With about half an hour
to go before the recording was
to begin, everyone decided to
take a break and get in out of
the cold for a while.
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When the group returned
to the telescope, a very light
snow flurry was in progress.
Periods of partial clearing
interspersed with intermittent
flurries would be in play the
rest of the night.
Using a keystroke com-
mand on the laptop, Alex
started a video recording of the
star field at 12:43 a.m. PST on
Sunday, December 11 that ran
for about 17 minutes. Because
of the occasional clouds and
light from the moon, the tar-
get star never was visible on
the computer screen. Still, in
a few days, one of the vol-
unteers will upload the video
file to a RECON server at the
Southwest Research Institute
in Colorado for analysis.
The Sisters RECON team
will apply what they learned
during this event to perhaps
better prepare for the next
campaign. Participating mem-
bers of the RECON team that
night were: Alex Burroughs,
Taylor Frey, Ryan Funk,
Rylee Funk, Wyatt Hernandez,
Spencer Kemp, Delsie
McCrystal, Jared Richardson
and Ramsey Schaar. The adult
advisors were Rima Givot,
Jim Hammond, and Ron
Thorkildson.
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Sisters