Collaborative Research: Characterizing the Trans-Neptunian Solar System with the Dark Energy Survey

尽管人类对天空进行了数百年的扫描，但直到现在，人类才能够真正开始搜索和识别我们太阳系中许多最遥远的天体，这些天体的轨道远远超出了海王星。通过使用地球上的望远镜反复扫描天空的大片区域，这些天体正变得可以通过持续的调查获得。这些测量可以探测到非常微弱的物体，以及它们的运动和亮度的任何变化。了解这些天体很重要，因为它们是早期太阳系的遗迹，可以帮助我们理解太阳系是如何形成和演变成我们今天所看到的。该项目将利用南半球正在进行的一项调查，开发新的数据处理工具，对调查图像中的瞬变和缓慢移动物体进行广泛搜索，以确定太阳系中最遥远的可见成员的特征。提案团队将通过与富兰克林研究所合作制作关于外太阳系的演示文稿和中学课程材料，扩大他们对费城地区中学教师和社区组织的成功外联计划。该计划的一个关键组成部分将是为在该项目中使用的数据中发现的小行星建议名称的竞赛。PIS还将通过参与这一项目指导两名研究生和本科生，他们在一个由来自不同文化背景的天文学家和粒子物理学家组成的大型国际团队工作。这是一项合作提案，旨在扩大使用Cerro-Tolo 4M望远镜上的暗能量相机(DECAM)获得的数据的使用。特别是，他们将扩展标准的DES数据处理，以便在DES图像中广泛搜索瞬变和缓慢移动的物体，以便确定太阳系最遥远的可见成员的特征，这些成员的轨道远远超出海王星，是新生太阳系重大扰动的遗迹。这将使他们能够将已知的内奥尔特云体和其他近日点超过50AU的小行星的数量增加约10倍，这些行星的动力学和物理状态在太阳系年龄段内基本上不受与(已知的)行星的相互作用的干扰。

Despite centuries of scanning the skies, it is only now that humans are able to begin to really search for and identify many of the most distant objects in our own Solar System, those that orbit well beyond Neptune. These objects are becoming accessible through ongoing surveys using telescopes on the Earth that scan large parts of the sky repeatedly. These surveys allow detection of very faint objects, as well as their motion and any changes in brightness. The objects are important to understand because they are the remnants of the early Solar System and can help us understand how our Solar System formed and evolved into what we see today. This project will capitalize on an ongoing survey in the southern hemisphere by developing new data processing tools to carry out an extensive search for transient and slow-moving objects in the survey images in order to characterize the most distant visible members of the Solar System. The proposal team will augment their successful outreach program to Philadelphia-area middle school teachers and community-based organizations through their partnership with the Franklin Institute to produce presentations and middle-school curricular materials on the outer solar system. A key component of the program will be a contest to suggest names for minor planets that are discovered in the data used in this project. The PIs will also mentor two graduate students and undergraduate students working in a large international team of astronomers and particle physicists from a myriad of cultural backgrounds through participation in this project.This is a collaborative proposal that seeks to expand the use of data being obtained as a part of the Dark Energy Survey (DES) using the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the Cerro-Tololo 4m telescope. In particular, they will extend the standard DES data processing in order to carry out an extensive search for transient and slow-moving objects in the DES images in order to characterize the most distant visible members of the Solar System, which orbit well beyond Neptune and are relics of major disturbances to the nascent Solar System. This will enable them to increase by a factor of ~10 the number of known Inner Oort Cloud bodies and other minor planets with perihelia beyond about 50 AU, which have dynamical and physical states that are largely unperturbed by interactions with the (known) planets over the age of the Solar System.