NSF Award
1212159
This pilot project will initiate the development of a large, coordinated citizen-science network to study small Solar System bodies in the Kuiper Belt. Studies of this population of objects have already led to major improvements in the understanding of planet formation and Solar System history; determining their sizes is essential to constraining their surface albedos and estimating the size-frequency distributions of different dynamical sub-populations. The Research and Education Cooperative Occultation Network (RECON) is proposed to eventually be a collection of 40 citizen-scientist-operated stations spread across the western United States from southern Arizona to northern Washington, each employing an 11-inch telescope and video camera system, with the purpose of measuring sizes of objects in the outer Solar System as small as 100 km by observing occultations of background stars. The full network is expected eventually to produce measurements of the sizes of 1 to 2 Kuiper Belt objects per year. This pilot project will support the initial establishment of 10 stations in order to develop and refine operating procedures and demonstrate the scientific capabilities of the network. The observing equipment will be located primarily in underserved communities, and affiliated with educational institutions such as K-12 school districts, libraries, and informal science centers. Local participants will be recruited and educated to carry out observations at their local sites, thus not only participating in cutting-edge research as citizen scientists, but also helping to disseminate the results through the network and in their own communities.
