'My colleagues and I were over the moon when we were invited to participate in an international mission funded by Nasa.'
"My colleagues and I were over the moon when we were invited to participate in an international mission funded by Nasa ." Pluto remains an important object for study, though. Today it is considered one of many dwarf planets beyond Neptune, in a doughnut-shaped region of mostly icy debris orbiting the Sun called thespacecraft; it flew close to Pluto in 2015, revealing spectacular images of the dwarf planet’s surface and atmosphere. But there’s still plenty to learn.
When scientists are trying to capture an occultation, they might use a single telescope that tracks the shadow of the object’s passage, or up to 100 telescopes strategically distributed to map out the shape of an object and discover or characterise satellites and asteroids. These telescopes need to be smaller and more mobile than their more static, larger equivalents used for other research.
The viewing spot was in a remote area in the Northern Cape, about 40km north of Upington. This was precisely the central point or dead centre of Pluto’s shadow on Earth, extending 2 377km in diameter, passing across South Africa and Namibia at 85 000km/h. Considering that, at the same time, our Earth is also moving at an orbital velocity of 107 000 km/h, nailing just the right timing and position for our telescope was crucial.
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