Commissioning of the Transneptunian Automated Occultation Survey (TAOS II)
Abstract
The Transneptunian Automated Occultation Survey (TAOS II) will aim to detect occultations of stars by small ( 1 km diameter) objects in the Kuiper Belt and beyond. Such events are very rare (0.001 events per star per year) and short in duration ( 200 ms), so many stars must be monitored at a high readout cadence in order to detect any events. TAOS II will operate three 1.3 meter telescopes at the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional at San Pedro Mártir in Baja California, México. With a 2.3 square degree field of view and a high speed camera comprising CMOS imagers, the survey will monitor 10,000 stars simultaneously with all three telescopes at a readout cadence of 20 Hz. Construction of the site began in the fall of 2013, and the telescopes were installed in 2017 October. In this poster, we present the status of the commissioning of the survey and the plans to begin science operations.
- Publication:
-
AAS/Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting Abstracts #50
- Pub Date:
- October 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018DPS....5031106L