The Transneptunian Automated Occultation Survey (TAOS II) скачать в хорошем качестве

The Transneptunian Automated Occultation Survey (TAOS II)

Ponente: Matthew Lehner, Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) Lugar: Auditorio Paris Pishmish Título: "The Transneptunian Automated Occultation Survey (TAOS II)” Resumen: The TAOS II survey aims to measure the small end (D greater than 30 km) of the Trans-Neptunian Object (TNO) size distribution. This measurement is needed to understand the formational and evolutional histories of the Solar System. Such objects are impossible to detect using direct observations since they are far too faint, with magnitudes typically r'less than35. Instead, TAOS II will search for serendipitous occultations of background stars by TNOs. Such events are rare (expected event rates less than around 0.001 per star per year) and short in duration (typically 200--500 ms, depending on the TNO size and location), necessitating observations of many stars at a high readout cadence. TAOS II will operate three 1.3m F/4 telescopes (FOV 1.7 deg) at the San Pedro Martir Observatory in Baja California, Mexico. Each telescope is equipped with a state-of-the-art camera using a mosaic of. custom CMOS imagers. These imagers were designed with the facility of high-cadence multiple sub-frame readout, with each camera able to monitor as many as 10,000 sub-frames at a rate of 20 Hz. The telescopes will synchronously monitor the same set of stars, and any detected event will be required to have been observed with all three telescopes. With a low expected event rate and few (typically 5 to 10) photometric measurements over the course of an occultation event, the false positive rate is expected to be significant due to random noise and scintillation events. The requirement of simultaneous detection in three telescope will greatly reduce the number of false positives due to random noise, and the wide separations (less than 125 m) between telescope should eliminate any spurious detections due to scintillation. TAOS II will generate a very unique dataset, with approximately 30 million high-cadence lightcurve sets (simultaneous light curve measurements of a single star from three telescopes), corresponding to roughly 4 trillion individual photometric measurements. A major strategic goal of this survey is to maximize the science output from this dataset, including both the core occultation science and other ancillary science. TAOS II is a collaboration between ASIAA (Taiwan), IA-UNAM (Mexico), NRC (Canada) and the CfA (USA). Members of the four collaborating institutes will have first access to this dataset. As such, members from these institutes are strongly encouraged to contribute to the scientific output of this survey, preferably in collaboration with members of other collaborating institutes. In this presentation, I will discuss the primary science goals of the TAOS II survey and provide a detailed description of the TAOS II survey facility and dataset. I will introduce a number of possible ancillary science goals, and cover the opportunities for collaboration. Finally, I will discuss a planned TAOS II science workshop to be held next Spring (dates TBD) in Ensenada, Mexico.