June Meeting – An Asteroid Hunt in the USA

Our meetings include brief business, a main presentation and items of astronomical news or activities from members.

The June Main Item will be: An Asteroid Hunt in the USA by Renato Langersek.  He will talk about the NASA Lucy spacecraft, that is currently en route to intercept a number of Trojan asteroids including the binary object (617) Patroclus/Menoetius. He will describe how last year he participated in the USA in NASA funded observing campaigns to observe occultations of the asteroid. More details below.

The June 2025 meeting is planned to be a face-to-face meeting; attendees can also join in online via Zoom. Details emailed to members. Guests/visitors can contact us for Zoom details at .
Visitors are welcome to join our face-to-face or online meetings.

Main Item details:

Renato Langersek will talk about the NASA Lucy spacecraft, that is currently en route to intercept a number of Trojan asteroids (objects that sit in the L4 and L5 Lagrange points of Jupiter’s orbit ), including the binary object (617) Patroclus/Menoetius. Renato will be talking about his participation in a NASA funded South Weste Research Institute (SWRI) observing campaigns, especially the latest in the USA last year, to monitor how Patroclus/Menoetius occulting a 13.4 magnitude star. The one-week expedition consisted of 30 teams of two observers each. Most of the teams were equipped with the SWRI provided Celestron Cll telescopes, Hyperstar lenses replacing the secondary mirror to modify the f ratio to f/2 and QHY 174 GPS cameras to take accurately timed data. The 30 teams were divided into two groups of 15 per asteroid. The two teams travelled from the LUCY Recon HQ in Meade Colorado to southern locations to join some local observers in New Mexico (for Patroclus) and Texas (for Menoetius). Due to the weather they all had to travel every day to sites with cloud free predictions. The Occultation events went as planned, and both groups attained great results. After the occultation, the people who started at the LUCY HQ travelled back North on the same day to return the equipment and collected data. Some southern teams that used their own equipment uploaded their data to the LUCY Recon HQ. Marc Buie, the expedition director processed all the data the same night. A 700m gap in the mountains of Menoetius was discovered in the process. Renato will finish off his presentation by giving a brief recount about his visit to Nasa’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston Texas to see the Apollo 11 Communications Centre.