Program: GN-2020B-Q-229

Title:Col-OSSOS: observing the last five targets of H-block
PI:Wesley Fraser
Co-I(s): Laura Buchanan, JJ Kavelaars, Rosemary Pike, Megan Schwamb, Michael Marsset, Susan Benecchi, Nuno Peixinho, Michele Bannister, Matthew Lehner, Shiang-Yu Wang

Abstract

Colours of the Outer Solar System Origins Survey (Col-OSSOS) is a large program that has been operated from 2014 through 2019 on Gemini-North and CFHT simultaneously. The goal of Col-OSSOS was to create the first brightness-complete, compositional-dynamical map of the outer Solar System and provide a powerful lever from which the exact migration history of the gas-giant planets can be accessed. Unfortunately it was discovered that due to a communication issue, five critical dynamically excited Kuiper Belt Objects were excluded from the Col-OSSOS sample. This has resulted in a brightness incomplete sample. Objects in mean-motion resonances with Neptune, are the most sensitive tracers of the exact migratory patterns experienced by the early Neptune. The current - incomplete - Col-OSSOS sample suggests that like the Trojans, the 3:2 resonant population is composed of a cosmogonically different mix of objects that unlike the bulk of the Kuiper Belt, are largely absent of the red class of objects, at direct odds with the favoured cosmogonic history. This proposal aims to correct our mistake by observing the 5 outstanding dynamically excited objects. We request 13.77 hours allowing us to recover the brightness complete aspect of Col-OSSOS, thereby enabling us to statistically compare direct outputs of cosmogonic models to the intrinsic KBO population.

Publications using this program's data