A Northern Ecliptic Survey for Solar System Science


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Making an inventory of the Solar System is one of the four fundamental science requirements for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). The current baseline footprint for LSSTs main Wide-Fast-Deep (WFD) Survey observes the sky below 0$^circ$ declination, which includes only half of the ecliptic plane. Critically, key Solar System populations are asymmetrically distributed on the sky: they will be entirely missed, or only partially mapped, if only the WFD occurs. We propose a Northern Ecliptic Spur (NES) mini survey, observing the northern sky up to +10$^circ$ ecliptic latitude, to maximize Solar System science with LSST. The mini survey comprises a total area of $sim$5800 deg$^2$/604 fields, with 255 observations/field over the decade, split between g,r, and z bands. Our proposed survey will 1) obtain a census of main-belt comets; 2) probe Neptunes past migration history, by exploring the resonant structure of the Kuiper belt and the Neptune Trojan population; 3) explore the origin of Inner Oort cloud objects and place significant constraints on the existence of a hypothesized planet beyond Neptune; and 4) enable precise predictions of KBO stellar occultations. These high-ranked science goals of the Solar System Science Collaboration are only achievable with this proposed northern survey.

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