Tracking icy objects, across the globe
On any given night, numerous icy bodies orbiting the sun far beyond the orbit of Pluto may happen to pass in front of a star (as seen from Earth). These events are called occultations, but because the icy moon-sized globes called Kuiper Belt Objects are so small, and their orbits not very accurately known, the vast majority of these events will go unobserved. That's too bad, because there's a lot to be learned by watching occultations: It's a way to learn the exact size of the object, to discover whether it's actually a pair of objects or is accompanied by one or more moons, and whether or not it has an atmosphere. These questions bear directly on our understanding of the origins of our solar system, because Kuiper Belt Object — in a belt of tens of thousands of icy worlds that includes the former planet Pluto —...