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

合作研究：通过暗能量巡天表征海王星外太阳系

• 批准号: 1515804
• 负责人: Gary Bernstein
• 金额: $ 29.82万
• 依托单位: University of Pennsylvania
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-09-01 至 2019-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1515804&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Characterizing; Trans; Neptunian

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.

尽管几个世纪以来，人类一直在扫描天空，但直到现在，人类才能够真正开始寻找和识别太阳系中许多最遥远的天体，这些天体的轨道远远超过海王星。地球上的望远镜反复扫描天空的大部分区域，通过持续的调查，这些天体变得触手可及。这些巡天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。了解这些物体很重要，因为它们是早期太阳系的残留物，可以帮助我们了解太阳系是如何形成并演变成我们今天看到的样子的。该项目将利用正在南半球进行的一项调查，开发新的数据处理工具，在调查图像中对瞬变和缓慢移动的物体进行广泛搜索，以表征太阳系中最遥远可见成员的特征。提案小组将通过与富兰克林研究所的合作，将其成功的外展计划扩大到费城地区的中学教师和社区组织，以制作有关外太阳系的演讲和中学课程材料。该计划的一个关键组成部分将是为在该项目使用的数据中发现的小行星命名竞赛。通过参与该项目，pi还将指导两名研究生和本科生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中工作。这是一项合作提案，旨在扩大使用Cerro-Tololo 4m望远镜上的暗能量相机（DECam）作为暗能量调查（DES）的一部分获得的数据。特别是，他们将扩展标准的DES数据处理，以便在DES图像中对瞬态和缓慢移动的物体进行广泛的搜索，以表征太阳系中最遥远的可见成员，这些成员的轨道远远超出海王星，是新生太阳系的主要干扰的遗迹。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50天文单位的小行星的数量增加约10倍，这些小行星具有动力和物理状态，在太阳系的年龄范围内，与（已知的）行星的相互作用在很大程度上不受干扰。