Discovery of TNOs
People:
Matt Holman, Rahul Dave, Pavlos Protopapas.Over the course of 3.5 year science mission, Pan-STARRS, will discover nearly every asteroid, Trojan, Centaur, long-period comet, short-period comet, and trans-neptunian object brighter than magnitude 23. This unprecedented census will be used to address a large number of questions regarding the physical and dynamical properties of the various small body populations of the solar system. Our project will use the output of this survey to determine the population of large, distant, and rare members of the outer solar system and and dynamically classify them. Roughly 1-2% of TNOs are wide binaries with companions at separations greater than 1 arcsec and brightness differences less than 2 magnitudes. Based on the estimated 7000 TNOs that Pan STARRS will discover, we anticipate finding 70-140 wide binaries. The PS1 data, 60 epochs over three years, is naturally suited to determining the orbits of these objects. Our search will accurately determine the binary fraction for a variety of subclasses of TNOs.
We are also involved in the TAOS project, already searching for TNOs.
Publications:
- The IIC Time Series Center: How Astronomers, Computer Scientists and Statisticians together are working to tackle hard problems in Astronomy (SEMINAR)
- The IIC Time Series Center: How Astronomers, Computer Scientists and Statisticians are working together to tackle hard problems in astronomy (SEMINAR)
- Pluto and Beyoooooond (TALK)
Last Updated at: 2007-09-29 01:48 PM.