March 2
Outer Solar System Small Body Science in the LSST Era
Speaker: Dr. Kat Volk, PSI
Abstract: The solar system’s small body populations have been sculpted by the formation and migration of the planets as well as the solar system’s present-day dynamics. I will briefly review current observational constraints on outer solar system small bodies and how they have shaped our understanding of the solar system’s dynamical history. I will then discuss how we expect the Vera C. Rubin observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) to dramatically expand the inventory of well-characterized small bodies available to test models of the outer solar system’s history. The impending influx of observations has prompted the development of new software and analysis tools to facilitate small body science in the “big data” LSST era. I will highlight some recent work on the Small Body Dynamics Tool (SBDynT), a user-friendly python package that simplifies common tasks such as dynamical classification of Transneptunian objects (using machine learning) and proper orbital element calculation.
Host: Ben Sharkey