Presentation 1 : Poster
Remote observation between IRTF-Hawaii and Observatoire de Meudon
Mirel Birlan, Richard Binzel
This paper describes the accomplishments and difficulties of the first remote observing campaign between Meudon and the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility on Mauna Kea. The experiment is a three institutions initiative: IRTF team (Dr. S.J. Bus), MIT (Professor R. Binzel), and Paris Observatory (Dr. Mirel Birlan). During 4 runs of observations between January and May 2002 we used the SpeX instrument to measure spectra in the range 0.9 - 2.5 microns for a spectroscopic study of near-Earth asteroids and the observation of 4979 Otawara, a flyby-target of the Rosetta mission. All target acquisition and data acquisition procedures were successfully commanded from Meudon with minimal delays in system response. The efficiency of the observing program was virtually the same as if the observers had been on location.