DEEP-South: The Progress and the Plans of the First Year

  • Published : 2016.10.12

Abstract

The wide-field and the round-the clock operation capabilities of the KMTNet enables the discovery, astrometry and follow-up physical characterization of asteroids and comets in a most efficient way. We collectively refer to the team members, partner organizations, the dedicated software subsystem, the computing facility and research activities as Deep Ecliptic Patrol of the Southern Sky (DEEP-South). Most of the telescope time for DEEP-South is devoted to targeted photometry of Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) to push up the number of the population with known physical properties from several percent to several dozens of percent, in the long run. We primarily adopt Johnson R-band for lightcurve study, while we employ BVI filters for taxonomic classification and detection of any possible color variations of an object at the same time. In this presentation, the progress and new findings since the last KAS meeting will be outlined. We report DEEP-South preliminary lightcurves of several dozens of NEAs obtained at three KMTNet stations during the first year runs. We also present a physical model of asteroid (5247) Krylov, the very first Non principal Axis (NPA) rotator that has been confirmed in the main belt (MB). A new asteroid taxonomic classification scheme will be introduced with an emphasis on its utility in the LSST era. The progress on the current version of automated mover detection software will also be summarized.

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