This patch commemorates the Pluto Occultation science mission by NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), which took place on the night of June 22/23, 2011. The patch shows SOFIA more than 1,800 miles from the U.S. west coast as Pluto's shadow raced across the Pacific Ocean at more than 53,000 mph. The flight departed from, and returned to the Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility (DAOF) in Palmdale, California. During this flight, Pluto was observed passing in front of a distant star using the High-Speed Imaging Photometer for Occultations (HIPO), developed by a team of researchers from the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., and the Fast Diagnostic Camera developed by scientists at the Deutsches SOFIA Institute (DSI), University, Stuttgart, Germany. In addition to the parties mentioned above, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the NASA Planetary Astronomy Program, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Naval Observatory (Flagstaff Station) were instrumental in the success of this observation.
