Detecting Interstellar Objects Through Stellar Occultations

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

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

References in corpus (13)

• Interstellar Interloper 1I/2017 U1: Observations from the NOT and WIYN Telescopes
• Initial characterization of interstellar comet 2I/Borisov
• An Observational Upper Limit on the Interstellar Number Density of Asteroids and Comets
• Spectroscopy and thermal modelling of the first interstellar object 1I/2017 U1 'Oumuamua
• 1I/2017 U1 (`Oumuamua) is Hot: Imaging, Spectroscopy and Search of Meteor Activity
• Col-OSSOS: Colors of the Interstellar Planetesimal 1I/`Oumuamua
• APO Time Resolved Color Photometry of Highly-Elongated Interstellar Object 1I/'Oumuamua
• Amateur telescopes discover a kilometre-sized Kuiper belt object from stellar occultation
• Detectability of Occultation of Stars by Objects in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud
• The fate of planetesimal discs in young open clusters: implications for 1I/'Oumuamua, the Kuiper belt, the Oort cloud and more
• On the Anomalous Acceleration of 1I/2017 U1 `Oumuamua
• A hypothesis for the rapid formation of planets
• The evolutionary tracks of young massive star clusters