DTIC ADA522749: Chasing Shadows in the Outer Solar System

2.3 MB·English

by  Defense Technical Information Center

Publicly accessible Penn Dissertations
University of Pennsylvania Year 
Chasing Shadows in the Outer Solar
System
Federica Bianco
University of Pennsylvania, [email protected]
ThispaperispostedatScholarlyCommons.
http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/176
Report Documentation Page Form Approved
OMB No. 0704-0188
Public reporting burden for the collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and
maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information,
including suggestions for reducing this burden, to Washington Headquarters Services, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports, 1215 Jefferson Davis Highway, Suite 1204, Arlington
VA 22202-4302. Respondents should be aware that notwithstanding any other provision of law, no person shall be subject to a penalty for failing to comply with a collection of information if it

does not display a currently valid OMB control number.
1. REPORT DATE 3. DATES COVERED
2010 2. REPORT TYPE 00-00-2010 to 00-00-2010
4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE 5a. CONTRACT NUMBER
Chasing Shadows in the Outer Solar System
5b. GRANT NUMBER
5c. PROGRAM ELEMENT NUMBER
6. AUTHOR(S) 5d. PROJECT NUMBER
5e. TASK NUMBER
5f. WORK UNIT NUMBER
7. PERFORMING ORGANIZATION NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES) 8. PERFORMING ORGANIZATION
University of Pennsylvania,3451 Walnut Street,Philadelphia,PA,19104 REPORT NUMBER
9. SPONSORING/MONITORING AGENCY NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES) 10. SPONSOR/MONITOR’S ACRONYM(S)
11. SPONSOR/MONITOR’S REPORT
NUMBER(S)
12. DISTRIBUTION/AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
Approved for public release; distribution unlimited
13. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES
14. ABSTRACT

15. SUBJECT TERMS
16. SECURITY CLASSIFICATION OF: 17. LIMITATION OF 18. NUMBER 19a. NAME OF
ABSTRACT OF PAGES RESPONSIBLE PERSON
a. REPORT b. ABSTRACT c. THIS PAGE Same as 129
unclassified unclassified unclassified Report (SAR)
Standard Form 298 (Rev. 8-98)
Prescribed by ANSI Std Z39-18
CHASING SHADOWS IN THE OUTER SOLAR SYSTEM
Federica Bianco
A DISSERTATION
in
Physics and Astronomy
Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
2010
Charles R. Alcock
Supervisor of Dissertation
Ravi Sheth
Graduate Group Chairperson
Acknowledgments
I ain’t no physicsist, but i know what matters!
Popeye
The work presented in Chapers 3, 4 & 5 was accomplished with the col-
laboration of the entire TAOS team: C. Alcock (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics), T. Axelrod (Steward Observatory), Y.-I. Byun (Department of As-
tronomy, Yonsei University), W. P. Chen (Institute of Astronomy, National Cen-
tral University, Taiwan), N. K. Coehlo (Department of Statistics, University of
California Berkeley), K. H. Cook (Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics,
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), R. Dave (Initiative in Innovative Com-
puting at Harvard), I. de Pater (Department of Astronomy, University of Cali-
fornia Berkeley), J. Giammarco (Department of Astronomy and Physics, East-
ern University; Department of Physics, Villanova University), D.-W. Kim (De-
partment of Astronomy, Yonsei University), S.-K. King (Institute of Astronomy
and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica), T. Lee (Institute of Astronomy and Astro-
physics, Academia Sinica), M. J. Lehner (Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics,
Academia Sinica; Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylva-
nia; Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), H.-C. Lin (Institute of Astron-
omy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica), J. J. Lissauer (Space Science and Astro-
biology Division, NASA Ames Research Center), S. L. Marshall (Kavli Institute for
ii
Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology), S. Mondal (Aryabhatta Research Institute
of Observational Sciences), P. Protopapas (Initiative in Innovative Computing at
Harvard), J. A. Rice (Department of Statistics, University of California Berkeley),
M. E. Schwamb (ivision of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute
of Technology), J.-H. Wang (Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia
Sinica; Institute of Astronomy, National Central University, Taiwan), S.-Y. Wang
(Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica), C.-Y. Wen(Institute
of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica), and Z.-W. Zhang (Institute of
Astronomy, National Central University, Taiwan),
This work was supported in part by the NSF under grant AST-0501681
and by NASA under grant NNG04G113G to Harvard University. Observations re-
ported in Chapter 2 were obtained at the MMT Observatory, a joint facility of
the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Arizona. Work at National Cen-
tral University was supported by the grant NSC 96-2112-M-008-024-MY3. Work at
Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy & Astrophysics was supported in part by
the thematic research program AS-88-TP-A02. Work at Yonsei University was sup-
ported by Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute. The work of N. Coehlo
was supported in part by NSF grant DMS-0636667 to the University of Califor-
nia Berkeley. Work at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was performed in
part under USDOE Contract W-7405-Eng-48 and Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344.
Work at SLAC was performed under USDOE contract DE-AC02-76SF00515. Work
at NASA Ames was supported by NASA’s Planetary Geology & Geophysics Pro-
gram. This research has made use of SAOImage DS9, developed by Smithsonian
Astrophysical Observatory.
As for the rest:
mamma e papa, la vita mi ha portato lontano, e c’`e sempre troppo poco tempo,
iii
molte cose da dire e fare che ci scoraggiamo e non diciamo o facciamo mai. vi voglio
bene e mi mancate. e vi sono grata per tutte le opportunit`a che mi avete dato.
momdadhobogregberngeorge, thanks for being patient.
greg again, for covering up for me, walking the dog for me, making phone calls for
me, cleaning up for me, driving around for me... and keeping irony going, most of
the times. i could have not done this – or much of anything else really – without
you.
Of course Charles, for finding the time, despite the many many more things that
should have come ahead of my questions and doubts, family, government, telescope
building. I know you lost many hours of sleep. And for the support in times of
crisis, of which there were many, such as when almost got deported.
Pavlos, averytolerantman. specialthanksforkeeping mecalmattimesandkeeping
me creative at others.
Matt, for escorting me in many Taiwan trips, helping me ordering the right liquor in
Chinese, facilitating intercultural communication, teaching me that fewer is better,
when it comes to lines of code, and wanting to have as little as possible to do with
my fits: it worked to control them.
Working on this thesis gave me the great opportunity to travel to Asia
many times, and for that I am grateful.
iv
ABSTRACT
CHASING SHADOWS IN THE OUTER SOLAR SYSTEM
Federica Bianco
Charles R. Alcock
The characteristics of the populations of objects that inhabit the outer
solar system carry the fingerprint of the processes that governed the formation and
evolution of the solar system. Occultation surveys push the limit of observation
into the very small and distant outer solar system objects, allowing us to set con-
straints on the structure of the Kuiper belt, Scattered disk and Sedna populations.
I collected, reduced, and analyzed vast datasets looking for occultations of stars by
outer solar system objects, both working with the Taiwanese American Occultation
Survey (TAOS) collaboration and leading the MMT/Megacam occultation effort.
Having found no such events in my data, I was able to place upper limits on the
Kuiper belt, scattered disk and Sedna population. These limits and their derivation
are described here.
v
Contents
List of Tables viii
List of Figures ix
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Historical note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Formation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.3 Observational techniques to explore the outer solar system . . . . . . 6
1.3.1 Diffraction dominated occultations of bright stars . . . . . . . 8
1.4 The story told by the small KBOs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2 The sub-km end of the Kuiper Belt size distribution 20
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.2 Fast Photometry with a Large telescope: The Continuous – Readout
Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.3 Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.3.1 Data extraction and reduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.4 Residual noise in the time-series . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.5 Search for events and efficiency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.5.1 Detection algorithm. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.5.2 Efficiency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
2.5.3 Rejection of false positives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
2.6 UpperlimittothesizedistributionofKBOsandscientificinterpretation 46
2.6.1 Comparison with the results from the TAOS survey . . . . . . 48
2.6.2 The Kuiper belt as reservoir of Jupiter Family Comets . . . . 49
3 The TAOS survey and the 3.75-year dataset 51
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3.2 3.75 years of TAOS data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
3.3 Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
3.3.1 Photometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3.3.2 Detection and false positive rejection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
vi
3.3.3 Occultation event simulator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
3.3.4 Determination of the stellar angular size . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
3.3.5 Implantation and efficiency test parameters . . . . . . . . . . 71
3.3.6 Analysis of the efficiency parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
4 Constraints on models of the Solar System formation and evolution
from the TAOS data 77
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
4.2 Effective coverage and upper limits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
4.3 The Jupiter Family Comets progenitor population . . . . . . . . . . . 79
4.4 Outer Solar System collisional models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
4.4.1 Pan & Sari (2005) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
4.4.2 Kenyon & Bromley (2004) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
4.4.3 Benavidez & Campo Bagatin (2009) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
4.4.4 Generic 3–regime model: constraints on the intermediate re-
gion of the size spectrum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
5 Exploring the Solar System beyond the Kuiper belt 94
5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
5.2 Search algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
5.3 Event rate calculation for Sedna-like objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
5.4 Renewed limits to the Sedna population . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
5.5 Future work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
6 Conclusions 106
6.1 The MMT/Megacam Survey for small KBOs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
6.2 The TAOS KBO survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
6.3 The TAOS Sedna and Scattered Disk Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
vii
List of Tables
2.1 MMT/Megacam survey observed fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.2 MMT/Megacam survey data set parameters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3.1 TAOS dataset parameters (3–telescope data) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
3.2 Distribution of synthetic events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
3.3 Parameter of implanted events in Figure 3.7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
viii