(Abridged) We describe here the most ambitious survey currently planned in the optical, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). A vast array of science will be enabled by a single wide-deep-fast sky survey, and LSST will have unique survey capability in the faint time domain. The LSST design is driven by four main science themes: probing dark energy and dark matter, taking an inventory of the Solar System, exploring the transient optical sky, and mapping the Milky Way. LSST will be a wide-field ground-based system sited at Cerro Pachon in northern Chile. The telescope will have an 8.4 m (6.5 m effective) primary mirror, a 9.6 deg$^2$ field of view, and a 3.2 Gigapixel camera. The standard observing sequence will consist of pairs of 15-second exposures in a given field, with two such visits in each pointing in a given night. With these repeats, the LSST system is capable of imaging about 10,000 square degrees of sky in a single filter in three nights. The typical 5$\sigma$ point-source depth in a single visit in $r$ will be $\sim 24.5$ (AB). The project is in the construction phase and will begin regular survey operations by 2022. The survey area will be contained within 30,000 deg$^2$ with $\delta<+34.5^\circ$, and will be imaged multiple times in six bands, $ugrizy$, covering the wavelength range 320--1050 nm. About 90\% of the observing time will be devoted to a deep-wide-fast survey mode which will uniformly observe a 18,000 deg$^2$ region about 800 times (summed over all six bands) during the anticipated 10 years of operations, and yield a coadded map to $r\sim27.5$. The remaining 10\% of the observing time will be allocated to projects such as a Very Deep and Fast time domain survey. The goal is to make LSST data products, including a relational database of about 32 trillion observations of 40 billion objects, available to the public and scientists around the world.

/pdf/lsst-from-science-drivers-to-reference-design-and-5mqdgndbq1.pdf

LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products

We describe here the most ambitious survey currently planned in the optical, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). The LSST design is driven by four main science themes: probing dark energy and dark matter, taking an inventory of the solar system, exploring the transient optical sky, and mapping the Milky Way. LSST will be a large, wide-field ground-based system designed to obtain repeated images covering the sky visible from Cerro Pachon in northern Chile. The telescope will have an 8.4 m (6.5 m effective) primary mirror, a 9.6 deg2 field of view, a 3.2-gigapixel camera, and six filters (ugrizy) covering the wavelength range 320–1050 nm. The project is in the construction phase and will begin regular survey operations by 2022. About 90% of the observing time will be devoted to a deep-wide-fast survey mode that will uniformly observe a 18,000 deg2 region about 800 times (summed over all six bands) during the anticipated 10 yr of operations and will yield a co-added map to r ~ 27.5. These data will result in databases including about 32 trillion observations of 20 billion galaxies and a similar number of stars, and they will serve the majority of the primary science programs. The remaining 10% of the observing time will be allocated to special projects such as Very Deep and Very Fast time domain surveys, whose details are currently under discussion. We illustrate how the LSST science drivers led to these choices of system parameters, and we describe the expected data products and their characteristics.

/pdf/lsst-from-science-drivers-to-reference-design-and-4qavgnpu5g.pdf

LSST: From Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products

THE origin of Pluto's unusual orbit—the most eccentric and inclined of all the planets—remains a mystery. The orbits of Pluto and Neptune overlap, but close approaches of these two planets are prevented by the existence of a resonance condition1: Pluto's orbital period is exactly 3/2 that of Neptune, which ensures that the conjunctions always occur near Pluto's aphelion. Long-term orbit integrations2–5 have uncovered other subtle resonances and near-resonances, and indicate that Pluto's orbit is chaotic yet remains macroscopically stable over billion-year timescales. A suggestion4 that the orbit may have evolved purely by chaotic dynamics appears unlikely in light of recent orbital stability studies6, unless one appeals to a well-timed collision to place Pluto in its stable orbit19. Here I show that Pluto could have acquired its current orbit during the late stages of planetary accretion, when the jovian planets underwent significant orbital migration as a result of encounters with residual planetesimals7. As Neptune moved outwards, a small body like Pluto in an initially circular orbit could have been captured into the 3:2 resonance, following which its orbital eccentricity would rise rapidly to its current Neptune-crossing value.

The Origin of Pluto's Peculiar Orbit

We report the orbital distribution of the trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) discovered during the Canada–France Ecliptic Plane Survey (CFEPS), whose discovery phase ran from early 2003 until early 2007. The follow-up observations started just after the first discoveries and extended until late 2009. We obtained characterized observations of 321 deg 2 of sky to depths in the range g ∼ 23.5–24.4 AB mag. We provide a database of 169 TNOs with high-precision dynamical classification and known discovery efficiency. Using this database, we find that the classical belt is a complex region with sub-structures that go beyond the usual splitting of inner (interior to 3:2 mean-motion resonance [MMR]), main (between 3:2 and 2:1 MMR), and outer (exterior to 2:1 MMR). The main classical belt (a = 40–47 AU) needs to be modeled with at least three components: the “hot” component with a wide inclination distribution and two “cold” components (stirred and kernel) with much narrower inclination distributions. The hot component must have a significantly shallower absolute magnitude (Hg) distribution than the other two components. With 95% confidence, there are 8000 +18001600 objects in the main belt with Hg 8.0, of which 50% are from the hot component, 40% from the stirred component, and 10% from the kernel; the hot component’s fraction drops rapidly with increasing Hg. Because of this, the apparent population fractions depend on the depth and ecliptic latitude of a trans-Neptunian survey. The stirred and kernel components are limited to only a portion of the main belt, while we find that the hot component is consistent with a smooth extension throughout the inner, main, and outer regions of the classical belt; in fact, the inner and outer belts are consistent with containing only hot-component objects. The Hg 8.0 TNO population estimates are 400 for the inner belt and 10,000 for the outer belt to within a factor of two (95% confidence). We show how the CFEPS Survey Simulator can be used to compare a cosmogonic model for the orbital element distribution to the real Kuiper Belt.

/pdf/the-canada-france-ecliptic-plane-survey-full-data-release-48sq1q20g1.pdf

The canada-france ecliptic plane survey—full data release: the orbital structure of the kuiper belt*

Here we measure the absolute magnitude distributions (H-distribution) of the dynamically excited and quiescent (hot and cold) Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs), and test if they share the same H-distribution as the Jupiter Trojans. From a compilation of all useable ecliptic surveys, we find that the KBO H-distributions are well described by broken power laws. The cold population has a bright-end slope, ɑ_1 = 1.5_(-0.2)^(+0.4), and break magnitude, H_B = 6.9_(-0.2)^(+0.1)(r'-band). The hot population has a shallower bright-end slope of, ɑ_1 = 0.87_(-0.2)^(+0.07), and break magnitude H_g B = 7.7_(-0.5)^(+1.0). Both populations share similar faint-end slopes of α_2 ~ 0.2. We estimate the masses of the hot and cold populations are ~0.01 and ~3 × 10^(–4) M_⊕. The broken power-law fit to the Trojan H-distribution has α_1 = 1.0 ± 0.2, α_2 = 0.36 ± 0.01, and H_B = 8.3. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test reveals that the probability that the Trojans and cold KBOs share the same parent H-distribution is less than 1 in 1000. When the bimodal albedo distribution of the hot objects is accounted for, there is no evidence that the H-distributions of the Trojans and hot KBOs differ. Our findings are in agreement with the predictions of the Nice model in terms of both mass and H-distribution of the hot and Trojan populations. Wide-field survey data suggest that the brightest few hot objects, with H_r' ≾ 3, do not fall on the steep power-law slope of fainter hot objects. Under the standard hierarchical model of planetesimal formation, it is difficult to account for the similar break diameters of the hot and cold populations given the low mass of the cold belt.

/pdf/the-absolute-magnitude-distribution-of-kuiper-belt-objects-qz57wk2fau.pdf

The absolute magnitude distribution of kuiper belt objects

We report the orbital distribution of the trans-neptunian objects (TNOs) discovered during the Canada-France Ecliptic Plane Survey (CFEPS), whose discovery phase ran from early 2003 until early 2007. The follow-up observations started just after the first discoveries and extended until late 2009. We obtained characterized observations of 321 sq.deg. of sky to depths in the range g 23.5 - 24.4 AB mag. We provide a database of 169 TNOs with high-precision dynamical classification and known discovery efficiency. Using this database, we find that the classical belt is a complex region with sub-structures that go beyond the usual splitting of inner (interior to 3:2 mean-motion resonance [MMR]), main (between 3:2 and 2:1 MMR), and outer (exterior to 2:1 MMR). The main classical belt (a=40‐47 AU) needs to be modeled with

The Canada-France Ecliptic Plane Survey - Full Data Release:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0510826.pdf

The CFEPS Kuiper Belt Survey: Strategy and presurvey results

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The canada-france ecliptic plane survey—full data release: the orbital structure of the kuiper belt*

The Canada-France Ecliptic Plane Survey - Full Data Release:

The CFEPS Kuiper Belt Survey: Strategy and presurvey results