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- Stellar Occultations with the 3.6-m DOT: Probing Planetary Atmospheres
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Stellar Occultations with the 3.6-m DOT: Probing Planetary Atmospheres
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The present paper (which is based on Sicardy et al. (2021)) discusses investigation of solar system bodies made possible by the simple yet powerful technique of stellar occultation. We focus on the stellar occultation by Pluto on 2020 June 6. The event was observed at Devasthal, Nainital, India in the I and H bands with the 1.3-m and 3.6-m telescopes, respectively. From the observed light curve, the surface pressure of Pluto’s atmosphere was constrained to psurf = 12.23−0.38+0.65 μbar. This indicates a continuing plateau phase since mid-2015 which is in excellent agreement with the prediction of Pluto volatile transport model of Meza et al. (2019). This result stresses the importance of coordinated stellar occultation observations with facilities like Devasthal Optical Telescope (DOT) and Himalayan Chandra Telescope (HCT) where a few minutes of observing time lead to high-impact science.