ADAM-WFS Automatic Detection of Asteroids and Meteoroids Wide Field Survey
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ADAM-WFSADAM-WFS AutomaticAutomatic DetectionDetection ofof AsteroidsAsteroids andand MeteoroidsMeteoroids WideWide FieldField SurveySurvey www.daa.fmph.uniba.sk/adam_enwww.daa.fmph.uniba.sk/adam_en Peter Vereš1,2, Juraj Tóth1,2, Robert Jedicke1, John Tonry1, Larry Denneau1, Richard Wainscoat1 , Leonard Kornoš2 and Jiří Šihla2,3 1 Institute for Astronomy, 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822-1839, USA; [email protected] 2 Department of Astronomy, Physics of the Earth and Meteorology, Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia; [email protected] 3Astronomical Institute, University of Bern, Sidlerstrasse 5, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland; [email protected] INTRODUCTION GOALS WHY ADAM-WFS? • Discovery and characterization of small NEA • Low-cost. Most surveys are order of magnitude more We propose a robotic low-cost optical survey for 1 – 300 m diameter interplanetary objects near the Earth with four and close-approaching populations [2]. expensive. state of the art telescopes with extremely wide field of views. The small Near-Earth Asteroids (NEA) represent • Search for potential Earth impactors [3] and • All sky vs. deep survey. We will cover entire sky per potential risk but also accessible planetary materials from the early Solar system evolution for future robotic or bolide pre-entry detection. night for the cost of the lower limiting magnitude. human space missions or commercial activities. The survey system will be optimized for the recognition of fast- • Monitoring, discovery and characterization of • We do not reinvent the wheel. Will use existing moving trailed asteroids and space debris and will provide real-time alert notification. The expected cost of the space debris. methods, software pipelines and technology, avoiding project that includes 1-year development and 2-year operation is $1,000,000. The successful demonstration of the • Automated sparse light curve photometry of years of development and testing. Will purchase off-the- system will promote cost-effective ADAM-WFS systems to be built around the world. bright main belt asteroids. shelf solutions. • Discovery of active comets. • Compact team. Our team will rely on individuals with CONCEPT • Stationary transient detection (variable stars, experience on existing and planned survey telescopes novae, supernovae, lensing events). (Pan-STARRS, ATLAS, LSST) and external cooperation ADAM-WFS will consist of 4 identical wide-field astrographs (Houghton-Terebizh f=300 mm, f/1.44) on a fast- and consultations. track mount with accurate guiding (Fig. 1). Each telescope will be equipped with a large-scale single chip CCD EXPECTED OUTCOME • Existing infrastructure. The prototype will be built and camera (4096x4096 pix) providing a total FOV of almost 100 square degrees. The predicted limiting magnitude with used on existing observatory without the need of the wide-band optical filter is +17.5 at S/N~5.0 with 30 sec exposures and a pixel scale of 4.36 arcsec/pix. This significant resources on constructing support structures configuration is able to survey almost the entire available sky in 3 visits per night and rapid image processing will The results of ADAM-WFS simulations using and buildings. We encourage deployment of future provide moving targets in almost a real-time. We will use the Moving Object Processing System (MOPS [1]) that has MOPS, OpenOrb [4], the Pan-STARRS ADAM-WFS systems on existing observatories and sites been utilized by the Pan-STARRS system. Stationary transients will be processed during the daytime. We propose to synthetic Solar System Model [5] for impactors with infrastructure. build the system at an existing observatory with a dedicated 60-80 cm follow-up telescope and existing infrastructure. and close-approachers with D<300m and • Focused on asteroids. Surveys are usually focused on SPACE-TRACK debris catalog were carried multiple interests. ADAM-WFS will be optimized out. The expected survey completion is shown towards asteroids. in Fig. 2. We expect to discover 30 – 120 NEO with D>10 m within 10 lunar distances per year and detect 350 – 550 space debris particles per night. We will obtain 650 light curves of bright main belt asteroids every year. Figure 2: Simulation of 1-year ADAM-WFS survey – completion of populations of direct Earth impactors (left) and near-miss NEO (right) as a function of the asteroid diameter. References [1] Denneau, L., Jedicke, R., Grav, T. et al.: 2013, arXiv:1302.7281, accepted by PASP [2] Vereš, P., Tóth, J., Kornoš, L.: 2006. CAOSP 36, 171 Figure 1: Concept of the mount and optical assembly of the ADAM-WFS survey (left and center) and the testing site of the [3] Vereš, P., Jedicke, R., Wainscoat, R. et al.: 2009, Icarus 203, 472 AGO Modra observatory in Slovakia (right). The system will be housed in the dome on the right. [4] Granvik, M., Virtanen, J., Oszkiewicz, D., Muinonen, K.: 2009, Met. & Planet. Sci. 44, 12 [5] Grav, T., Jedicke, R., Denneau, L. et al.: 2011, PASP 123, 423 Acknowledgments We would like to thank for the financial support from NASA grant No. NNX08AR22G issued through Planetary Science Division of the NASA Science Mission Directorate and grant of the Slovak grant agency APVV-0516-10..