AAS 207th Meeting, 8-12 January 2006
Session 121 Pan-STARRS
Poster, Wednesday, 9:20am-6:30pm, January 11, 2006, Exhibit Hall

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[121.04] Pan-STARRS: Main Belt Sky-Plane Density Determination, and Trailed Object Identification

J. R. Masiero, R. Jedicke, P.A. Price, E.A. Magnier, J.N. Heasley (IfA, U Hawaii)

The sky-plane density of Main Belt objects is one of the main factors required to estimate the number of moving objects Pan-STARRS will be able to observe and identify. The Main Belt dominates all other classes of asteroids in magnitude-limited surveys, thus calculating the number per square degree of Main Belt objects on the ecliptic will allow us to precisely estimate the number of moving objects Pan-STARRS will discover. To this end, we have used 15~deg2 of CFHT-MegaCam data to simulate 2 Pan-STARRS fields of view. We have searched these data for all moving objects, using a pipeline very similar to the one that will be employed by Pan-STARRS' Image Processing Pipeline (IPP). To calculate true sky-plane density, we have generated artificial moving objects and planted them in our images, allowing us to directly determine the efficiency of our pipeline.

We have also performed a similar efficiency analysis for trailed objects of varying lengths, to test our trailed object fitting algorithms and determine if there is a variance with length or brightness.


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