KBO encounters |
KBO encounters |
Aug 2 2008, 12:53 PM
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#501
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Newbie Group: Members Posts: 6 Joined: 1-August 08 Member No.: 4280 |
Hi,
I’m regular follower of NH and I’m also interested in the 2nd leg of the mission, i.e the 2016+ KBOs encounters. Does anyone know when operations about this leg (starting with searching objects of interest with HST or some other earth-based means, I suppose) are expected to begin ? |
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Feb 6 2019, 09:30 PM
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#502
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Newbie Group: Members Posts: 15 Joined: 17-July 15 Member No.: 7604 |
One aspect of signal extraction from the noise that may help a little, is that we have some idea what to look for. It reminds me in some ways of LIGO's extraction of gravitational wave signals from their raw data. They had modelled (if I recall correctly) thousands of possible waveforms that they could look for, and they knew that a similar waveform would appear within a fairly narrow time window at their second detector. This helped detection a lot.
If a KBO passes over a star, there will be a probably quite small change in brightness in the detector pixels that are influenced by that star, but it will be abrupt, and it will be followed (probably, and dependant on typical shadow paths) by changes due to other stars in predictable positions in relation to the first star, being occulted. (I'm assuming here that we have a good star catalogue that allows simulation of such events.) As the trailing edge of the shadow passes, we get a predictable reversal of the changes. In neighbouring telescopes, we get related changes, which will not be exactly the same, but will have some spatial and temporal correlations to the changes seen by the first telescope. My hope is that the combination of multiple correlated small changes in meaningful patterns may be detectable, in situations where any one change on its own would not be. |
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