Star-watchers RECON Sisters skies

All are invited to attend the next Stars over Sisters star watch to be held at the Sisters Park and Recreation District building and the Sisters High School parking lot on Saturday, July 18, beginning at 9:30 p.m.

The event features a presentation that will describe the RECON project and explain how citizens of Sisters can participate.

RECON stands for Research and Education Collaborative Occultation Network, and is a citizen science project in which the community of Sisters is privileged to play a role. Citizen science is scientific research conducted, in whole or in part, by amateur or nonprofessional scientists.

The goal of RECON is to investigate objects at the outer regions of our solar system beyond the orbit of Neptune. Specifically, the effort is to measure the size of these distant bodies using the method of stellar occultation. An occultation occurs when one celestial object moves in front of another, temporarily hiding it from view. In this case, a small, far-off world moves in front of a known star. The length of time between when the star winks out and when it becomes visible again is proportional to the size of the obscuring body.

Following the presentation, the telescope and other equipment used for the project will be set up outside and available for viewing planets, stars and other goodies in the summer sky. Other telescopes will also be set up to observe the heavens.