Free Astronomy Magazine

MAY-JUNE 2014 would have been in South America and, consequently, Braga-Ribas along with several of his colleagues decided to plan an observing campaign to follow with various instru- ments the photometric trend of the event. The project in- volved the telescopes of 8 different observatories in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, in- cluding the TRAPPIST, a Danish robotic tele- scope (1.5 metre diameter), located at La Silla Observatory (ESO) in Chile, specialized in planetary transits and thus suitable for stellar occultations. The need for more ob- servational points along the visibility band of the phenomenon derives from the fact that in spite of how well the position of the occulted star and the orbit of the asteroid is known, the diameter and shape of the latter are, in most cases, not known with the same degree of precision and it is there- fore not possible to predict with absolute certainty which areas will be covered by the shadow. Since this principle works both ways, if we are able to detect the bounda- ries of that shadow, on the basis of the oc- T he Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) – the instrument that al- lowed us to discover Chariklo's rings. [E. Jehin/ESO]