×

Statistical methods for detecting stellar occultations by Kuiper Belt objects: the Taiwanese–American occultation survey. (English) Zbl 1100.85501

Summary: The Taiwanese–American Occultation Survey (TAOS) will detect objects in the Kuiper Belt by measuring the rate of occultations of stars by these objects, using an array of three to four 50 cm wide-field robotic telescopes. Thousands of stars will be monitored, resulting in hundreds of millions of photometric measurements per night. To optimize the success of TAOS, we have investigated various methods of gathering and processing the data, and developed statistical methods for detecting occultations. In this paper we discuss these methods. The resulting estimated detection efficiencies will be used to guide the choice of various operational parameters that determine the mode of actual observation when the telescopes come on line and begin routine observations. In particular, we show how real-time detection algorithms may be constructed, taking advantage of having multiple telescopes. We also discuss a retrospective method for estimating the rate at which occultations occur.

MSC:

85A04 General questions in astronomy and astrophysics
85A35 Statistical astronomy
PDFBibTeX XMLCite
Full Text: DOI arXiv

References:

[1] Axelrod, T., Alcock, C., Cook, K. and Park, H. (1992). A direct census of the Oort cloud with a robotic telescope. In Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series 34 171–181. Astronomical Society of the Pacific, San Francisco.
[2] Bailey, M. (1976). Can invisible bodies be observed in the solar system? Nature 259 290–291. · Zbl 0055.13701 · doi:10.2307/1909834
[3] Benjamini, Y. and Hochberg, Y. (1995). Controlling the false discovery rate: A practical and powerful approach to multiple testing. J. Roy. Statist. Soc. Ser. B 57 289–300. JSTOR: · Zbl 0809.62014
[4] Edgeworth, K. (1949). The origin and evolution of the solar system. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 109 600–609.
[5] Fernandez, J. (1980). On the existence of a comet belt beyond Neptune. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 192 481–491.
[6] Jewitt, D. (1999). Kuiper belt objects. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 27 287–312.
[7] Jewitt, D. and Luu, J. (1993). Discovery of the candidate Kuiper belt object 1992QB1. Nature 362 730–732.
[8] Kuiper, G. (1951). On the original at the solar system. In Astrophysics: A Topical Symposium (J. A. Hynek, ed.) 357–424. McGraw-Hill, New York.
[9] Liang, C.-L. (2001). The detection of stellar occultations by Kuiper Belt objects. Ph.D. dissertation, Dept. Statistics, Univ. California, Berkeley.
[10] Rice, J. (1995). Mathematical Statistics and Data Analysis , 2nd ed. Duxbury, Belmont, CA. · Zbl 0868.62006
[11] Stern, S. A. (1996). The historical development and status of Kuiper disk studies. In Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series 107 209–232.
[12] Weissman, P. (1995). The Kuiper belt. Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics 33 327–358.
This reference list is based on information provided by the publisher or from digital mathematics libraries. Its items are heuristically matched to zbMATH identifiers and may contain data conversion errors. In some cases that data have been complemented/enhanced by data from zbMATH Open. This attempts to reflect the references listed in the original paper as accurately as possible without claiming completeness or a perfect matching.