Minor body occultations: statistics and survey requirements

Details Minor body occultations: statistics and survey requirements Minor body occultations: statistics and survey requirements

Jan 2005

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005hia....13..775c&link_type=abstract

In: Highlights of Astronomy, Vol. 13, as presented at the XXVth General Assembly of the IAU - 2003 [Sydney, Australia, 13 - 26 J

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Kuiper Belt Objects, Occultations

Scientific paper

The occultation of background stellar sources by foreground minor bodies mainly Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) can be used to survey physical properties of the foreground population. We will discuss statistics related to KBO occultations and discuss what constraints can be placed on the KBO population. While the optical depth for occultation is relatively high for KBOs lowering the number of stars one should monitor the event duration is at the subsecond level and puts strong constraints on the instrumentation side. We discuss requirements for a reasonable ground-based survey and suggest that an array of telescopes spread over few kilometers with imaging and timing capabilities at the level of 100 millisecond or less down to a magnitude limit of 14 in the V-band may be used to probe the KBO population below a kilometer in size. With an array one also probes the projected shapes of KBos and the presence of binaries. We also discuss relative merits of a space-based experiment. If fainter stars are monitored the diffraction fringes present in certain light curves can be used to extract physical information related to the foreground occulting body.

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