Type: Talk
Session: Solar System Science
Author: W. Garrett Levine

Abstract: Recently, several near-Earth minor planets have been discovered that display no evidence of a coma in deep photometry but exhibit non-gravitational acceleration in astrometric analyses. These so-called “dark comets” provide a new window into the activity states of small bodies in the inner solar system, but identifying each one has required years-long, targeted observational campaigns. Motivated by the objective of finding similar objects without the requirement of time-intensive follow-up data, we conduct injection-recovery exercises to examine the LSST’s ability to discover near-Earth objects on non-ballistic trajectories through astrometry. The wide-fast-deep strategy will collect astrometry for some decameter-scale near-Earth minor planets across months-long observational arcs and across multiple apparitions, both of which improve the prospects of constraining non-gravitational acceleration. We use sorcha, a recently developed survey simulator for solar system science with the LSST, to generate mock observations of a population of near-Earth minor planets with gravity-only and non-gravitational trajectories. Then, we implement orbit-fitting to assess the discoverability of non-gravitational acceleration. We evaluate the feasibility of identifying non-ballistic trajectories over the ten-year LSST and during a single apparition, the latter of which would provide the opportunity for time-sensitive follow-up observations to constrain the source of “dark comet” activity. In total, this research showcases the LSST’s capacity to open-up novel avenues of minor planet science.