English

Detecting Interstellar Objects Through Stellar Occultations

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2020-03-04 v2 Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics

Abstract

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 (0.1s\sim 0.1 \mathrm{s}) of their stellar occultation signals and high inclination relative to the ecliptic plane. An all-sky monitoring program of all 7×106\sim 7 \times 10^6 stars with R12.5R \lesssim 12.5 using 1-m telescopes with 0.1  s0.1 \; \mathrm{s} cadences is predicted to discover 1\sim 1 interstellar object per year.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2001.02681,
  title  = {Detecting Interstellar Objects Through Stellar Occultations},
  author = {Amir Siraj and Abraham Loeb},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2001.02681},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

5 pages, 4 figures, 1 table; accepted for publication in ApJL