High-fidelity Simulations of the Near-Earth Object Search Performance of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope

Peter Vereš, Steven R. Chesley
(Submitted on 27 Jun 2017)

We perform high fidelity simulations of a wide-field telescopic survey searching for Near-Earth Objects (NEO) larger than 140\,m, focusing on the observational and detection model, detection efficiency and accuracy. As a test survey we select the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. We use its proposed pointings for a 10-year mission and model the detection of near-Earth objects in the fields. We discuss individual model parameters for magnitude losses, vignetting, fading, asteroid rotation and colors, fill factor, limiting magnitude, rate of motion, field shape and rotation and survey patterns and we assess results in terms of the cumulative completeness of the detected population as a function of size and time. Additionally, we examine the sources of modeling uncertainty and derive the overall NEO population completeness for the baseline LSST survey to be 55±5% for NEOs with absolute magnitude brighter than 22. Including already discovered objects and ongoing surveys, the population completeness at the end of the LSST baseline survey should reach ∼77%.

Comments:    44 pages, 20 figures, 11 tables. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1705.06209
Subjects:    Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Journal reference:    The Astronomical Journal, 2017, Volume 154, Number 1
DOI:    10.3847/1538-3881/aa73d1
Cite as:    arXiv:1706.09398 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:1706.09398v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Peter Vereš 
[v1] Tue, 27 Jun 2017 19:16:47 GMT (4590kb,D)
https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.09398