The Pan-STARRS Synthetic Solar System Model: A tool for testing and efficiency determination of the Moving Object Processing System Tommy Grav Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University
[email protected] Robert Jedicke Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii
[email protected] Larry Denneau Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii
[email protected] Steve Chesley Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
[email protected] Matthew J. Holman Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
[email protected] Timothy B. Spahr Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
[email protected] March 27, 2008 Submitted to Icarus. Manuscript: 76 pages, with 2 tables and 23 figures. Corresponding author: Tommy Grav Department of Physics and Astronomy Johns Hopkins University 3400 N. Charles St. Baltimore, MD 21218 Phone: (410) 516-7683 Email:
[email protected] 2 Abstract We present here the Pan-STARRS Moving Object Processing System (MOPS) Synthetic Solar System Model (S3M), the first ever attempt at building a com- prehensive flux-limited model of the small bodies in the solar system. The model is made up of synthetic populations of near-Earth objects (NEOs with a sub-population of Earth impactors), the main belt asteroids (MBAs), Trojans of all planets from Venus through Neptune, Centaurs, trans-neptunian objects (classical, resonant and scattered TNOs), long period comets (LPCs), and in- terstellar comets (ICs). All of these populations are complete to a minimum of V = 24:5, corresponding to approximately the expected limiting magnitude for Pan-STARRS'sability to detect moving objects. The only exception to this rule are the NEOs, which are complete to H = 25 (corresponding to objects of about 50 meter in diameter).