News From the Field
MIT Astronomer Leads the First Team to Study a Kuiper Belt Object During a Stellar Occultation

June 16, 2010

The trick is to know enough about the orbit of a Kuiper belt object (KBO) to be able to predict its path and observe it as it passes in front of a star. This was done successfully for the first time last October when a team of 18 astronomy groups led by James Elliot, a professor of planetary astronomy in MIT's department of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences, observed an occultation by an object named "KBO 55636." Full Story

Source
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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