After Pluto... Options

[just-nick]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-STARRS ... apparently will be able to find just about anything that moves.

And, pending funding, there's this even bigger bad boy:

LSST

Though I do take points away for the name.

--Nick

[Holder of the Tw...]

[ ... apparently will be able to find just about anything that moves.

Thank you, stevesliva. I read the article, and found it interesting in several respects. I always consider Wikipedia a little suspect, but I have no reason to believe that anything in particular in this article is not factual.

However, the problem here is one of pulling faint (mag 22-24) objects out of a somewhat bright background. At 1 to 2 arc sec resolution, as I'm assuming these telescopes will have, you are seeing small variations in brightness as the KBOs move around over the milky way, rather than faint but distinct objects moving over a black starry background. Within the Wikipedia article, it mentioned that times around full moon would have to be avoided because of the brightly lit sky. The milky way forms a kind of permanent nearly "full moon" type sky in it's location, and it's at it's widest and brightest near Sagittarius.

I'm wondering how even Pan-STARRS will cope with the background noise. Hubble, I'm sure, has the resolution, but it's field of view is too narrow to do the kind of survey required.

[SFJCody]

There's a ppt about the search problems here:
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~spencer/nhkbo...kbofind4web.ppt

[Holder of the Tw...]

There's a ppt about the search problems here:

That's exactly the sort of summary I was looking for. However, having read it, I'm still a little unsettled.

An overview of the conclusions seems to be this: "We're pretty sure we can do this, by brute force if necessary. There's going to be better technology and techniques down the road in any case. There are some dust lanes in some search areas that won't be so bad. And maybe it WOULD be a good idea to use Hubble on occasion."

Ooookaaayyy. I say good hunting to them. I mean that sincerely.

(And I'll be back in a few years to say I always had faith in them)

[john_s]

Ooookaaayyy.  I say good hunting to them.  I mean that sincerely. 

(And I'll be back in a few years to say I always had faith in them)

Thanks for the good wishes! Your summary is fairly accurate, though Hubble's of limited use for the search because of its small field of view. Though once we've found some candidates, Hubble may be able to help up pin down their orbits. Pan-STARRS has a wide field of view but is limited by its fairly small aperture. We're counting on big telescopes with big cameras to do this job right. We already have a bunch of data from the Subaru telescope, covering the search area with fairly short exposures, in case there are some particularly bright targets, and we're grinding through that data now. Fortunately we've got nine years before we need the results from the full survey.

John Spencer.

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

One of the main arguments for New Horizons 2 is that it could fly by a really big second known KBO with a large moon (as well as flying by Uranus and its moons fairly near their equinox). This wasn't quite strong enough an argument for me to push it in print as I did NH 1 -- although, if the manned program hadn't been eating up NASA's budget like popcorn, I WOULD have pushed it. But it's a safe bet that virtually every probe launched to solar escape velocity from now on will take advantage of the opportunity to fly by at least one already-known KBO, given the extreme importance of observing a fair-sized sampling of them (which the seminal 2002 Decadal Survey report actually described as more important than flying by Pluto specifically).

In particular, there's a good chance that at least one or two of the future New Frontiers missions in the next decade or two will fly by one of the giant planets and drop off one or more atmospheric entry probes -- and it would be insane not to then use that craft to visit a KBO as well. (Plus a Centaur object or one of Jupiter's Trojan asteroids, should the opportunity for either present itself.)

[tasp]

Is it feasible that during the last 2 or 3 years of the trek to Pluto the NH cameras could be used to image the KBO near the exit cone of the NH flight path?

If the cameras can be set for long exposures, relatively dim objects might be seen. We would be interested in the brighter (larger) objects anyhow, for possible flybys.

Also, the rapid motion of the craft will result in long baselines for blink comparing images (shades of Mr. Tombaugh!) (or just let the computers do it) to discern the possible encounter objects.

My understanding is the exit cone for post Pluto is not all that large, so there should not be large numbers of pictures to take, anyhow, if this is feasible.

[djellison]

That discussion re: using NH to search for KBO's has been had I think, Alan confirming that given the apeture of LORRI, compared to the apeture of ground based observatories, even given the proximity of NH to the target, the maths just doesnt add up and ground based obs are a much much better way to do it.

Doug

[ljk4-1]

Is it too early to ask what stars New Horizons will be passing relatively nearby in the coming millennia?

[Aldebaran]

Is it too early to ask what stars New Horizons will be passing relatively nearby in the coming millennia?

I've heard Ross 248 being mentioned but a lot depends on the final trajectory. The closest it can come is around 2 LY in around 30,000 to 40,000 years from now. That may sound close, but when you consider that Voyager 1 has only travelled 0.002 LY so far it puts it in perspective.

The window is between 30,000 and 40,000 years due to the rapid motion of Ross 248. In 40,000 years, NH will have travelled about 1.5 LY, so it may be closer to Ross 248 than the Sun at some stage. At that stage, Ross 248 will probably be the closest star to the Sun.

[jman0war]

Would they please send a Rover, like MSL to Pluto?

Preferably within my lifetime.