KBO detections and nightly pair filter choice

Science Survey Strategy
#1

Hi @ljones

A big thank to you and your team for all the work with the survey simulations and scheduler. Looking at the types of simulations, I was wondering if you’ve looked at the nightly pair filter suggestion from the Kat Volk’s white paper , where near opposition frames are taken with nightly r pairs if possible. I see there are several nightly pair options in the 1.4 simulations and cumulative TNO detection fraction metrics but it’s not clear to me if that’s using a representative spectra similar to a red KBO or a neutral KBO. Any additional info you can give, is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
~Meg

#2

I don’t think that one got passed on by the SOC, but it should be a fairly easy experiment to try. This is a situation where there is some strong tension with other science cases because the variables and transients group strongly prefers pairs taken in different filters. For the final set of simulations, I’m doing one run that is more solar system optimized, so I’ll be sure to include r+r pairs in that one.

1 Like
#3

Hi Meg, The TNO analysis in the 1.4 runs had the red TNO spectra. I guess the input orbit files are harder to access and I should put them online somewhere, and I’ve just realized (from checking now) that the copies on epyc are out of date in terms of the SED used.
However, the orbit files were updated to refer to TNO.dat for the spectra, so this is the red one that @fraserw put together (with a CFEPS L7 TNO model type distribution).
So not a ton of very distant objects, but I think it should be representative enough to capture any survey strategy differences.

#4

The white paper referenced acknowledged that tension between colors in pairs vs. not colors in pairs and that’s why the suggestion that some pairs be in the same filter (while not worrying about others). The ‘near opposition’ constraint would mean that not all pairs of visits have to be in the same filter, and this is likely an important consideration to simulate. I know that right now we don’t really distinguish when a pair is taken (near opposition or not, early season, etc.) but we could and then swap from pairs in same filter to pairs in different filters.

#5

Thanks.

#6

That would be great to see from the simulations to see if there is an impact. If there is a loss of distant objects, having the month that the fields are in opposition taken with r+r (or up to 3 nights to trigger Solar System Processing detections) might be enough. I imagine 3 months might cause too many tensions/impacts to astrophysical transient science.