Detecting Interstellar Objects Through Stellar Occultations [EPA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/2001.02681


Stellar occultations have been used to search for Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud objects. We propose a search for interstellar objects based on the characteristic durations ($\sim 0.1 \mathrm{s}$) of their stellar occultation signals and high inclination relative to the ecliptic plane. An all-sky monitoring program of $\sim 2 \times 10^7$ stars with an R-band magnitude of 14 using 1-m telescopes with $0.1 \; \mathrm{s}$ cadences, is predicted to discover $\gtrsim 5$ interstellar objects per year.

Read this paper on arXiv…

A. Siraj and A. Loeb
Fri, 10 Jan 20
24/65

Comments: 5 pages, 4 figures, 1 table; submitted to ApJL