STATUS OF THE TAOS PROJECT AND A SIMULATOR FOR TNO OCCULTATION - Advances in Geosciences - page 345

STATUS OF THE TAOS PROJECT AND A SIMULATOR
FOR TNO OCCULTATION
SUN-KUN KING †,∗ , CHARLES ALCOCK ‡ , TIM AXELROD § ,
FEDERICA B. BIANCO ¶,‡ , YONG-IK BYUN ,WEN-PINGCHEN ,
KEM H. COOK †† , YUNG-HSIN CHANG , RAHUL DAVE ¶ ,
JOSEPH GIAMMARCO ¶ , TYPHOON LEE † , MATTHEW LEHNER ‡,¶ ,
JACK LISSAUER ‡‡ , STUART MARSHALL §§ , SOUMEN MONDAL ,
IMKE DE PATER ¶¶ , RODIN PORRATA ¶¶ ,JOHNRICE ¶¶ ,
MEGAN E. SCHWAMB ¶ , ANDREW WANG † , SHIANG-YU WANG † ,
CHIH-YI WEN † and ZHI-WEI ZHANG
† Institute of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, ROC
‡ Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA, USA
§ Steward Observatory, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
¶ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, PA, USA
Department of Astronomy, Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea
Institute of Astronomy, National Central University, Chung-Li, Taiwan, ROC
†† Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, USA
‡‡ NASA, Ames Research Center, Mountain View, CA, USA
§§ Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Stanford, CA, USA
¶¶ University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
∗ [e-mail]
The majority of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) are probably small comets
beyond the orbit of Neptune. A study of TNOs may enable a better understand-
ing of the origin of short-period comets and of the process of planet formation
and the early history of the solar system. An occultation survey is currently the
only way to detect these objects down to a size of a few kilometers at such a dis-
tance. The status of the Taiwan-America Occultation Survey (TAOS) project
is reported. In order to monitor thousands of stars on the order of a fraction
of a second using CCD cameras, a novel CCD readout technique, the “shutter-
less zipper mode,” is applied. Two predicted asteroid occultation events were
successfully observed. Instead of a simple number count of occultation events,
an interpretation of a TNO occultation survey result can be obtained by using
the simulator described here. Through comparison of the results from an obser-
vation and from our simulator, a specific astronomical or astrophysical model
can be constrained.
∗ Corresponding author.
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