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Status of the Transneptunian Automated Occultation Survey (TAOS II)

2014; SPIE; Volume: 9145; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1117/12.2054853

1996-756X

M. J. Lehner, Shiang‐Yu Wang, Charles Alcock, Kem H. Cook, Gábor Fűrész, John C. Geary, D. Hiriart, Paul T. P. Ho, William H. Lee, Frank Melsheimer, Timothy Norton, M. Reyes‐Ruiz, M. G. Richer, Andrew Szentgyorgyi, Wei-Ling Yen, Zhiwei Zhang,

Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies

The Transneptunian Automated Occultation Survey (TAOS II) will aim to detect occultations of stars by small (~1 km diameter) objects in the Kuiper Belt and beyond. Such events are very rare (< 10 -3 events per star per year) and short in duration (~200 ms), so many stars must be monitored at a high readout cadence. TAOS II will operate three 1.3 meter telescopes at the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional at San Pedro Mártir in Baja California, México. With a 2.3 square degree field of view and a high speed camera comprising CMOS imagers, the survey will monitor 10,000 stars simultaneously with all three telescopes at a readout cadence of 20 Hz. Construction of the site began in the fall of 2013.