Background
This IR&D was to analyze an exceptional occultation, when Pluto crossed between observers and a star on June 6, 2022; and to present the results at a high-profile, well attended planetary meeting in October 2022 (the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences, DPS). This work will allow us to understand properties of Pluto’s changing atmosphere and position our team to win upcoming NASA funding opportunities.
Approach
This work had two aspects: analyzing the data collected from 15 telescopes on June 6, 2022 (internal) and presenting the results at DPS (public).
Accomplishments
We presented two talks at the 2022 DPS meeting: showing the precise locations of the sites on Earth and relative to Pluto’s shadow, details of our reduction method and analysis of the central flash, including color dependence of the bright central points.
Figure 1: Example of lightcurves analyzed under this research and presented at DPS. The left-hand lightcurve was a northern graze and shows a bowl-like shape that only probes partially into the shadow.
Figure 2: The rightmost lightcurve went through the center of the shadow and shows bright central points where the atmosphere refocused the starlight.