J/AJ/156/20ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/156/20doi:10.26093/cds/vizier.51560020CDSPorter S.B.Buie M.W.Parker A.H.Spencer J.R.Benecchi S.Tanga P.,Verbiscer A.Kavelaars J.J.Gwyn S.D.J.Young E.F.Weaver H.A.,Olkin C.B.Parker J.W.Stern S.A.2019-02-01T10:54:25Z2019-01-15T09:37:41ZCDS support team

CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, 11 rue de l'Universite, F-67000 Strasbourg, France

cds-question@unistra.frsolar-systemastrometryasteroidsNASA's New Horizons spacecraft will conduct a close flyby of the cold-classical Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) designated (486958) 2014 MU69 on 2019 January 1. At a heliocentric distance of 44 au, "MU69" will be the most distant object ever visited by a spacecraft. To enable this flyby, we have developed an extremely high-precision orbit fitting and uncertainty processing pipeline, making maximal use of the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and pre-release versions of the ESA Gaia Data Release 2 (DR2) catalog. This pipeline also enabled successful predictions of a stellar occultation by MU69 in 2017 July. We describe how we process the WFC3 images to match the Gaia DR2 catalog, extract positional uncertainties for this extremely faint target (typically 140 photons per WFC3 exposure), and translate those uncertainties into probability distribution functions for MU69 at any given time. We also describe how we use these uncertainties to guide New Horizons, plan stellar occultions of MU69, and derive MU69's orbital evolution and long-term stability.2018AJ....156...20Phttps://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/AJ/156/20CatalogResearchIsServedByTAP VizieR generic serviceIsServedByConesearch servicerelated-toJ/AJ/154/62 : Orbital parameters of Kuiper Belt objects (Volk+, 2017)https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.htmlhttps://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/AJ/156/20https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/AJ/156/20http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/AJ/156/20https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/votable?-source=J/AJ/156/20https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/votable?-source=J/AJ/156/20http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/votable?-source=J/AJ/156/20GETtext/xml+votablehttps://tapvizier.cds.unistra.fr/TAPVizieR/tapCone search capability for table J/AJ/156/20/table3 (*2014 MU_69_ astrometry for "rd2b" solution)https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/conesearch/J/AJ/156/20/table3?https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/conesearch/J/AJ/156/20/table3?http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/conesearch/J/AJ/156/20/table3?GETtext/xml+votable180.050000true281.2944657812-20.88418235940.0055555555555555566/28988 28989 28990 29006 29025 29026 29028https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/moc/J/AJ/156/20?format=asciidefaultJ/AJ/156/20/table3*2014 MU_69_ astrometry for "rd2b" solutionIDHST WFC3/UVIS dataset identifiermeta.id;meta.datasetcharrecnoRecord number assigned by the VizieR team. Should Not be used for identification.meta.recordintJDUTC Julian Date of observationyrtime.epochdoubleRAJ2000Right Ascension in decimal degrees (J2000)degpos.eq.ra;meta.maine_RAJ2000[3.997/12.89] 1-{sigma} uncertainty in RAdeg (J2000)masstat.error;pos.eq.rafloatDEJ2000Declination in decimal degrees (J2000)degpos.eq.dec;meta.maine_DEJ2000[4.429/12.064] 1-{sigma} uncertainty in DEdeg (J2000)masstat.error;pos.eq.decfloat