- tests of our purchased fast acquisition cameras: sensitivity and timing accuracy validations.
- implementation of the GAIA DR1 and DR2 catalogs in our prediction chain, and opening of a dedicated public page:
http://lesia.obspm.fr/lucky-star/predictions/(s’ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre)- discovery of a ring around the dwarf planet Haumea in January 2017. This is the first ring ever detected in the Trans-Neptunian region (published in Nature, 12 Oct. 2017), and the third one co-discovered by the P.I. of the project, after Neptune's ring arcs in 1984 (Nature 1986) and Chariklo' rings in 2013 (Nature 2014).
- detailed study of Chariklo's ring structure and shape of the body from the three best stellar occultations ever observed (2017).
- advances on ring dynamics around small bodies in the solar system, in particular the strong effect of resonances between the orbital period of the ring particles and the rotation period of the body
- monitoring of Pluto's atmosphere until 2016, with climatic implications of our results
- relationship between our occultation results and the detection of CO an HCN in Pluto's atmosphere using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile
- various publications of papers on the size, shape, density and/or rings of large Trans-Neptunian Objects and Centaurs (Chariklo, 2003 AZ84, 2007 UK126)
- observation and analysis of an occultation by Triton's atmosphere on Oct. 5, 2017, successfully observed in Europe, N. Africa and USA. Constraints on the atmospheric structure, seasona evolution and upper limits of winds obtained with un precedented accuracy.
- Serendipitous occultations : various campaigns have been organized in Calar Alto, Spain (2.2m and 1.23m telescopes) with the multi object photometer Miosotys in 2016-2019. Potential occultations by sub-km TNOs found in the data, as well as in the Corot satellite data. A paper on constraints on the collisional history of the Solar System has been revised and re-submitted.
- The stellar occultation method has been extended to objects not initially expected in the list.
One category is the Trojans asteroids that share Jupiter's orbit. This work has been made in the perspectie of the NASA/Lucy mission that will flyby six of those objects
staring in 2027.
Another new kind of targets has been the Near Earth Asteroids. There are very difficult to catch by occultations owing to their small (< km) sizes. However, thanks to the Gaia astrometric catalog and radar detection, we succeeded on observin the object Apophis in March 2021.
Some disseminations and communications are summarized in the corresponding tab.
Everything considered, the Lucky Star project allowed be to become one of the very top leader in occultation works. This is true in terms of number of objects detected and variety of results obtained. They encompass the physical parameters of the observed objects (size, shape, density, albedo, bulk density), the properties and dynamics of their rings, and the structure of their atmospheres.
