TAOS – The Taiwanese-American Occultation Survey

✍ Scribed by M. J. Lehner; C. Alcock; T. Axelrod; F. Bianco; Y.-I. Byun; W.-P. Chen; K. H. Cook; R. Dave; I. de Pater; J. Giammarco; S.-K. King; T. Lee; J. Lissauer; S. L. Marshall; S. Mondal; T. Nihei; J. Rice; M. Schwamb; A. Wang; S.-Y. Wang; C.-Y. Wen; Z.-W. Zhang

• Book ID: 101695881
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 334 KB
• Volume: 327
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0004-6337
• DOI: 10.1002/asna.200610688

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

The Taiwanese‐American Occultation Survey (TAOS) seeks to determine the number and size spectrum for small (∼3 km) bodies in the Kuiper Belt. This will be accomplished by searching for the brief occultations of bright stars (R ∼ 14) by these objects. We have designed and built a special purpose photometric monitoring system for this purpose. TAOS comprises four 50 cm telescopes, each equipped with a 2048 × 2048 pixel CCD camera, in a compact array located in the central highlands of Taiwan. TAOS will monitor up to 2 000 stars at 5 Hz. The system went into scientific operation in the autumn of 2005. (© 2006 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)