Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T23:14:33.606Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The next decade of Solar System discovery with Pan-STARRS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2006

Robert Jedicke ,
E. A. Magnier ,
N. Kaiser  and
K. C. Chambers
Robert Jedicke
Affiliation:
Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI, 96822 email: [email protected]
E. A. Magnier
Affiliation:
Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI, 96822 email: [email protected]
N. Kaiser
Affiliation:
Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI, 96822 email: [email protected]
K. C. Chambers
Affiliation:
Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI, 96822 email: [email protected]
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) at the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy is a funded project to repeatedly survey the entire visible sky to faint limiting magnitudes (mR ~ 24). It will be composed of four 1.8m diameter apertures each outfitted with fast readout orthogonal transfer Giga-pixel CCD cameras. A single aperture prototype telescopes has achieved first-light in the second half of 2006 with the full system becoming available a few years later. Roughly 60% of the surveying will be suitable for discovery of new solar system objects and it will cover the ecliptic, opposition and low solar-elongation regions. In a single lunation Pan-STARRS will detect about five times more solar system objects than the entire currently known sample. Within its first year Pan-STARRS will have detected 20,000 Kuiper Belt Objects and by the end of its ten year operational lifetime we expect to have found 107 Main Belt objects and achieve ~90% observational completeness for all NEOs larger than ~300m diameter. With these data in hand Pan-STARRS will revolutionize our knowledge of the contents and dynamical structure of the solar system.

Keywords

Surveytelescopeinstrumentationastrometrydata analysisidentificationpopulation models
Type
Contributed Papers
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 2 , Symposium S236: Near Earth Objects, our Celestial Neighbors: Opportunity and Risk , August 2006 , pp. 341 - 352
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2007

References

Bottke, W. F., Morbidelli, A., Jedicke, R., Petit, J. M., Levison, H. F., Michel, P. & Metcalfe, T. S. 2002, Icarus 156, 399CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bottke, W. F., Durda, D. D., Nesvorný, D., Jedicke, R., Morbidelli, A., Vokrouhlický, D., & Levison, H. F. 2005, Icarus 179, 63CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chambers for the Pan-STARRS team, in the Proceedings of the Air Force Maui Optical Surveillance meeting, 2006.Google Scholar
Chang, H.-K., King, S.-K., Liang, J.-S., Wu, P.-S., Lin, L. C.-C., & Chiu, J.-L. 2006, Nature 442, 660CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chesley, S. R. & Spahr, T. B. 2004, in: Belton, M. J. S., Morgan, T. H., Samarasinha, N. H. & Yeomans, D. K., Mitigation of Hazardous Comets and Asteroids (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge), p. 22CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gladman, B. et al. , 2006, Icarus, submittedGoogle Scholar
Hsieh, H. H. & Jewitt, D. 2006, Science 312, 561CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ivezić, Ž. et al. , 2001, Astron. J. 122, 2749CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jewitt, D. 2004, Earth, Moon & Planets 92, 465CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaasalainen, M. 2004, Astron. Astrophys. 422, L39CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kubica, J. et al. , 2006, Icarus, submittedGoogle Scholar
Magnier for the Pan-STARRS team, in the Proceedings of the Air Force Maui Optical Surveillance meeting, 2006Google Scholar
Nesvorný, D., Bottke, W. F. Jr., Dones, L. & Levison, H. F. 2002, Nature 417, 720CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stuart, J. S. & Binzel, R. P. 2004, Icarus 170, 295CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tonry, J. L., Luppino, G. A., Kaiser, N., Burke, B., Jacoby, G. H. 2002, Experimental Astronomy 14, 17CrossRefGoogle Scholar