Sentences with word «occultation»

The word "occultation" refers to the phenomenon when one celestial object such as a star or planet appears to be hidden or obscured by another object, usually when they pass in front of each other from our perspective on Earth. Full definition
Continued observations of stellar occultations of Pluto will show us whether its atmosphere freezes out.
Elliot crater recognises James Elliot (1943 - 2011), an MIT researcher who pioneered the use of stellar occultations to study the Solar System — leading to discoveries such as the rings of Uranus and the first detection of Pluto's thin atmosphere.
[7] The rings of Uranus, and the ring arcs around Neptune, were found in a similar way during occultations in 1977 and 1984, respectively.
These so - called occultation surveys are currently the best shot astronomers have at parsing the smallest constituents of the Kuiper Belt.
From studying the way the starlight dimmed, Marc Buie of Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and James Elliot of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, reported 14 August that Pluto's atmospheric temperature has dropped some 20 kelvin since the last occultation in 1988.
«When New Horizons observes the solar occultation with Alice, the observations will tell us the composition and density of Pluto's atmosphere as a function of height,» Stern said.
Spire and GeoOptics both employ GPS radio occultation on their small satellites, a technique that harvests GPS signals deflected by Earth's atmosphere.
Meanwhile, astronomers had another chance of observing a stellar occultation by Pluto today, with telescopes at Mauna Kea, Hawaii.
Mechanical solar L1 occultation scenarios involve extremely small, regional, transient, temporary and reversible attenuation of solar irradiance, which would be insignificant for solar energy systems that would be modeled and tested to high order before implemented.
Other instruments aboard include the High - Speed Imaging Photometer for Occultation, which will observe objects such as planets, satellites, and asteroids as they pass in front of stars, and the German Receiver for Astronomy at Terahertz Frequencies, which will determine the chemical composition of interstellar gas clouds.
The atmosphere of Neptune — an analysis of radio occultation data acquired with Voyager 2.
«SOFIA conducted its first occultation observation, also involving Pluto, in July 2011.
Of these approximately 35 % have submitted observations in various forms eg; CCD astrometry and photometry, images, occultation reports, video and visual astrometry and photometry
Other major meetings attended by section officers were the EUROPLANET N3 Strategic Workshop «Stellar Occultation Studies» in Paris and Meeting on Asteroids and Comets in Europe in Vienna.
Measuring the eccentricity of individual planets is only practical in favorable cases that are amenable to complementary techniques (e.g., radial velocities, transit timing variations, occultation photometry).
Occultation predictions are circulated monthly by Assistant Director Andrew Elliott.
Still mesmerized, some will take advantage of next week's (February 20th) favorable lunar occultation of Saturn to search for evidence of ring material outside the well known boundaries of the ring system.
«But precisely timed occultations like these have the potential to provide incredibly precise answers.»
Are you comparing the problems of 60 - year old radiosonde data of the upper troposphere with HALogen Occultation Experiment (HALOE) measurements of the stratosphere over the last decade or so?
Taiwan - American Occultation Survey Astronomers are using four small robotic telescopes to simultaneously scan the same patch of sky.
With the preparation of accurate predictions successful observation of asteroid occultations has now been recorded in the UK.
The Helos mission was to determine accurately the location of bright X-ray sources using the lunar occultation technique.
Astronomers are able to deduce the objects» sizes by timing these stellar occultations precisely from various spots on Earth.
The Alice solar occultation showed absorption by methane and nitrogen and revealed the presence of the photochemical products acetylene and ethylene.
The Magellan Venus Radio Occultation profiles can be found at PDS, but the Pioneer Venus soundings seem to be missing..
A detailed ozone model budget analysis was performed with simultaneous observations of O3, HCl, H2O, CH4, NO, and NO2 from the Halogen Occultation Experiment (HALOE) on the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) under conditions with the strongest photochemical control of ozone.
Schlichting's group found just a single occultation, caused by a KBO approximately one kilometer in diameter, in 4.5 years of observations.
«This is huge,» notes occultation guru David Dunham.
The relatively brief occultation (it had been predicted to last nearly 2 minutes), combined with negative observations from a pair of telescopes in Argentina, suggested right away that Eris wasn't as large as thought.
«If we're able to collect good data, this new occultation might answer a couple of minor puzzles,» says Buie.
But after those stellar occultations revealed its unexpected atmosphere, I was hooked on Pluto atmosphere research.
Large Binocular Telescope occultation data confirm significant thermal flux at short wavelengths.
From NASA: «Image is an artist's conception of the Pluto occultation seen close - up, not a photo.»
The two moons are shown to be strongly elongated, and composed of two lobes, as suggested by the recently observed occultation data by the moon Romulus.
The first, shows the difference between the actual length of day and 86,400 SI seconds (24 hours) over the past two and a half thousand years estimated from records of various astronomical events (eclipses, planetary transits, occultations etc).
We detected planetary occultations of Kepler - 17b with both the Kepler and Spitzer Space Telescopes.
But even if the remote satellite did not provide a 100 % occultation picking out objects otherwise lost in the glare should be possible.
«This new planetary system presents various peculiarities which make it extraordinarily interesting, e.g., it was detected by the Kepler spatial observatory through the planetary transit method (occultations similar to eclipses)», Barrado details.
The most recent Pluto occultation opportunity was on June 29, 2015, in the southern hemisphere, just two weeks before New Horizons makes its closest approach to the Pluto system.
«When the 1988 stellar occultation occurred, scientists were out to detect the atmosphere, which had been expected on theoretical grounds for more than a decade,» Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator, said via email.
Atmospheric temperatures were taken in the UV channel using the stellar occultation method, wherein a spectrometer captures the light emitted by a star as it goes behind a planet.
Later in 1969 a separate satellite (the Highly Eccentric Lunar Occultation Satellite - Helos) was proposed.
The commitment to a solar L1 occultation solution was made a few decades ago.
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