arXiv subjects

David E. Trilling

Publications and source records attributed to David E. Trilling.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2024

Laser Irradiation of Carbonaceous Chondrite Simulants: Space Weathering Implications for C-complex Asteroids

Surfaces of carbonaceous asteroids (C-complex) have shown diverse contrasting spectral variations, which may be related to space weathering. We performed laser irradiation experiments on CI and CM simulant material under vacuum to mimic the spectral alteration induced by micrometeorite impacts. We used in situ ultraviolet-visible and near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy to analyze spectral alterations in response to pulsed laser irradiation, as well as scanning electron microscopy and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy to search for microstructural and compositional changes. Laser irradiation causes an increase in spectral slope (reddening) and a decrease in the albedo (darkening), and these changes are stronger in the ultraviolet-visible region. These spectral changes are likely driven by the excess iron found in the altered surface region, although other factors, such as the observed structural changes, may also contribute. Additionally, while the 0.27~$μm$ band appears relatively stable under laser irradiation, a broad feature at 0.6~$μm$ rapidly disappears with laser irradiation, suggesting that space weathering may inhibit the detection of any feature in this spectral region, including the 0.7~$μm$ band, which has typically been used an indicator of hydration. Comparing our laboratory results with optical spectrophotometry observations of C-complex asteroids, we find that the majority of objects are spectrally red and possess colors that are similar to our irradiated material rather than our fresh samples. Furthermore, we also find that ``younger'' and ``older'' C-complex families have similar colors, suggesting that the space weathering process is near-equal or faster than the time it takes to refresh the surfaces of these airless bodies.

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arXiv2024

The Active Asteroids Citizen Science Program: Overview and First Results

We present the Citizen Science program Active Asteroids and describe discoveries stemming from our ongoing project. Our NASA Partner program is hosted on the Zooniverse online platform and launched on 2021 August 31, with the goal of engaging the community in the search for active asteroids -- asteroids with comet-like tails or comae. We also set out to identify other unusual active solar system objects, such as active Centaurs, active quasi-Hilda asteroids, and Jupiter-family comets (JFCs). Active objects are rare in large part because they are difficult to identify, so we ask volunteers to assist us in searching for active bodies in our collection of millions of images of known minor planets. We produced these cutout images with our project pipeline that makes use of publicly available Dark Energy Camera (DECam) data. Since the project launch, roughly 8,300 volunteers have scrutinized some 430,000 images to great effect, which we describe in this work. In total we have identified previously unknown activity on 15 asteroids, plus one Centaur, that were thought to be asteroidal (i.e., inactive). Of the asteroids, we classify four as active quasi-Hilda asteroids, seven as JFCs, and four as active asteroids, consisting of one Main-belt comet (MBC) and three MBC candidates. We also include our findings concerning known active objects that our program facilitated, an unanticipated avenue of scientific discovery. These include discovering activity occurring during an orbital epoch for which objects were not known to be active, and the reclassification of objects based on our dynamical analyses.

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arXiv2024

High-quality Extragalactic Legacy-field Monitoring (HELM) with DECam

High-quality Extragalactic Legacy-field Monitoring (HELM) is a long-term observing program that photometrically monitors several well-studied extragalactic legacy fields with the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) imager on the CTIO 4m Blanco telescope. Since Feb 2019, HELM has been monitoring regions within COSMOS, XMM-LSS, CDF-S, S-CVZ, ELAIS-S1, and SDSS Stripe 82 with few-day cadences in the $(u)gri(z)$ bands, over a collective sky area of $\sim 38$ deg${\rm ^2}$. The main science goal of HELM is to provide high-quality optical light curves for a large sample of active galactic nuclei (AGNs), and to build decades-long time baselines when combining past and future optical light curves in these legacy fields. These optical images and light curves will facilitate the measurements of AGN reverberation mapping lags, as well as studies of AGN variability and its dependences on accretion properties. In addition, the time-resolved and coadded DECam photometry will enable a broad range of science applications from galaxy evolution to time-domain science. We describe the design and implementation of the program and present the first data release that includes source catalogs and the first $\sim 3.5$ years of light curves during 2019A--2022A.

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arXiv2024

Exoplanet Analog Observations of Earth from Galileo Disk-integrated Photometry

The Galileo spacecraft had distant encounters with Earth in 1990 and 1992. Limited Solid State Imager (SSI) data acquired during these encounters has been previously presented, but the majority of the data from these Earth flybys have not been presented in the literature. Observations of Earth taken from afar are both rare and directly relevant to the development of any future exo-Earth direct imaging mission. Here we present a pipeline that vets, calibrates, and measures the disk-integrated brightness of the Earth, in multiple filters, from the complete SSI data sets from both the 1990 and 1992 Galileo flybys. The result is over 1500 usable photometric measurements for Earth as an analog for an exoplanet. The 1990 data set includes full rotational lightcurves in six bandpasses spanning the optical range. The 1992 data set is more limited, with lightcurves only spanning 14 hr. Time-averaged photometry for both encounters is presented while variability and color are discussed relative to findings from NASA's EPOXI mission (which also provided photometric lighturves for Earth). The new Galileo/SSI data are used to further validate the Virtual Planetary Laboratory 3D spectral Earth model, which often serves as a stand-in for true disk-integrated observations of our planet. The revived Galileo/SSI data for Earth is a testament to the ability of NASA's Planetary Data System to maintain data over decades-long timescales. The disk-integrated products derived from these data add to a very short list of calibrated and published whole-disk observations of the Pale Blue Dot.

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arXiv2023

The DECam Ecliptic Exploration Project (DEEP) II. Observational Strategy and Design

We present the DECam Ecliptic Exploration Project (DEEP) survey strategy including observing cadence for orbit determination, exposure times, field pointings and filter choices. The overall goal of the survey is to discover and characterize the orbits of a few thousand Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) using the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) Blanco 4 meter telescope. The experiment is designed to collect a very deep series of exposures totaling a few hours on sky for each of several 2.7 square degree DECam fields-of-view to achieve a magnitude of about 26.2 using a wide VR filter which encompasses both the V and R bandpasses. In the first year, several nights were combined to achieve a sky area of about 34 square degrees. In subsequent years, the fields have been re-visited to allow TNOs to be tracked for orbit determination. When complete, DEEP will be the largest survey of the outer solar system ever undertaken in terms of newly discovered object numbers, and the most prolific at producing multi-year orbital information for the population of minor planets beyond Neptune at 30 au.

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arXiv2023

The DECam Ecliptic Exploration Project (DEEP) III: Survey characterization and simulation methods

We present a detailed study of the observational biases of the DECam Ecliptic Exploration Project's (DEEP) B1 data release and survey simulation software that enables direct statistical comparisons between models and our data. We inject a synthetic population of objects into the images, and then subsequently recover them in the same processing as our real detections. This enables us to characterize the survey's completeness as a function of apparent magnitudes and on-sky rates of motion. We study the statistically optimal functional form for the magnitude, and develop a methodology that can estimate the magnitude and rate efficiencies for all survey's pointing groups simultaneously. We have determined that our peak completeness is on average 80\% in each pointing group, and our magnitude drops to $25\%$ of this value at $m_{25} = 26.22$. We describe the freely available survey simulation software and its methodology. We conclude by using it to infer that our effective search area for objects at 40 au is $14.8°^2$, and that our lack of dynamically cold distant objects means that there at most $8\times 10^3$ objects with $60 < a < 80$ au and absolute magnitudes $H \leq 8$.

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arXiv2023

The DECam Ecliptic Exploration Project (DEEP) VI: first multi-year observations of trans-Neptunian objects

We present the first set of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) observed on multiple nights in data taken from the DECam Ecliptic Exploration Project (DEEP). Of these 110 TNOs, 105 do not coincide with previously known TNOs and appear to be new discoveries. Each individual detection for our objects resulted from a digital tracking search at TNO rates of motion, using two to four hour exposure sets, and the detections were subsequently linked across multiple observing seasons. This procedure allows us to find objects with magnitudes $m_{VR} \approx 26$. The object discovery processing also included a comprehensive population of objects injected into the images, with a recovery and linking rate of at least $94\%$. The final orbits were obtained using a specialized orbit fitting procedure that accounts for the positional errors derived from the digital tracking procedure. Our results include robust orbits and magnitudes for classical TNOs with absolute magnitudes $H \sim 10$, as well as a dynamically detached object found at 76 au (semi-major axis $a\approx 77 \, \mathrm{au}$). We find a disagreement between our population of classical TNOs and the CFEPS-L7 three component model for the Kuiper belt.

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arXiv2023

The DECam Ecliptic Exploration Project (DEEP): V. The Absolute Magnitude Distribution of the Cold Classical Kuiper Belt

The DECam Ecliptic Exploration Project (DEEP) is a deep survey of the trans-Neptunian solar system being carried out on the 4-meter Blanco telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile using the Dark Energy Camera (DECam). By using a shift-and-stack technique to achieve a mean limiting magnitude of $r \sim 26.2$, DEEP achieves an unprecedented combination of survey area and depth, enabling quantitative leaps forward in our understanding of the Kuiper Belt populations. This work reports results from an analysis of twenty 3 sq.\ deg.\ DECam fields along the invariable plane. We characterize the efficiency and false-positive rates for our moving-object detection pipeline, and use this information to construct a Bayesian signal probability for each detected source. This procedure allows us to treat all of our Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) detections statistically, simultaneously accounting for efficiency and false positives. We detect approximately 2300 candidate sources with KBO-like motion at S/N $>6.5$. We use a subset of these objects to compute the luminosity function of the Kuiper Belt as a whole, as well as the Cold Classical (CC) population. We also investigate the absolute magnitude ($H$) distribution of the CCs, and find consistency with both an exponentially tapered power-law, which is predicted by streaming instability models of planetesimal formation, and a rolling power law. Finally, we provide an updated mass estimate for the Cold Classical Kuiper Belt of $M_{CC}(H_r < 12) = 0.0017^{+0.0010}_{-0.0004} M_{\oplus}$, assuming albedo $p = 0.15$ and density $ρ= 1$ g cm$^{-3}$.

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arXiv2023

The DECam Ecliptic Exploration Project (DEEP): I. Survey description, science questions, and technical demonstration

We present here the DECam Ecliptic Exploration Project (DEEP), a three year NOAO/NOIRLab Survey that was allocated 46.5 nights to discover and measure the properties of thousands of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) to magnitudes as faint as VR~27, corresponding to sizes as small as 20 km diameter. In this paper we present the science goals of this project, the experimental design of our survey, and a technical demonstration of our approach. The core of our project is "digital tracking," in which all collected images are combined at a range of motion vectors to detect unknown TNOs that are fainter than the single exposure depth of VR~23 mag. Through this approach we reach a depth that is approximately 2.5 magnitudes fainter than the standard LSST "wide fast deep" nominal survey depth of 24.5 mag. DEEP will more than double the number of known TNOs with observational arcs of 24 hours or more, and increase by a factor of 10 or more the number of known small (<50 km) TNOs. We also describe our ancillary science goals, including measuring the mean shape distribution of very small main belt asteroids, and briefly outline a set of forthcoming papers that present further aspects of and preliminary results from the DEEP program.

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arXiv2023

The Solar System Notification Alert Processing System (SNAPS): Design, Architecture, and First Data Release (SNAPShot1)

We present here the design, architecture, and first data release for the Solar System Notification Alert Processing System (SNAPS). SNAPS is a Solar System broker that ingests alert data from all-sky surveys. At present, we ingest data from the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) public survey, and we will ingest data from the forthcoming Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) when it comes online. SNAPS is an official LSST downstream broker. In this paper we present the SNAPS design goals and requirements. We describe the details of our automatic pipeline processing in which physical properties of asteroids are derived. We present SNAPShot1, our first data release, which contains 5,458,459 observations of 31,693 asteroids observed by ZTF from July, 2018, through May, 2020. By comparing a number of derived properties for this ensemble to previously published results for overlapping objects we show that our automatic processing is highly reliable. We present a short list of science results, among many that will be enabled by our SNAPS catalog: (1) we demonstrate that there are no known asteroids with very short periods and high amplitudes, which clearly indicates that in general asteroids in the size range 0.3--20 km are strengthless; (2) we find no difference in the period distributions of Jupiter Trojan asteroids, implying that the L4 and L5 cloud have different shape distributions; and (3) we highlight several individual asteroids of interest. Finally, we describe future work for SNAPS and our ability to operate at LSST scale.

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arXiv2022

A Radiative-Convective Model for Terrestrial Planets with Self-Consistent Patchy Clouds

Clouds are ubiquitous\, -- \,they arise for every solar system planet that possesses an atmosphere and have also been suggested as a leading mechanism for obscuring spectral features in exoplanet observations. As exoplanet observations continue to improve, there is a need for efficient and general planetary climate models that appropriately handle the possible cloudy atmospheric environments that arise on these worlds. We generate a new 1D radiative-convective terrestrial planet climate model that self-consistently handles patchy clouds through a parameterized microphysical treatment of condensation and sedimentation processes. Our model is general enough to recreate Earth's atmospheric radiative environment without over-parameterization, while also maintaining a simple implementation that is applicable to a wide range of atmospheric compositions and physical planetary properties. We first validate this new 1D patchy cloud radiative-convective climate model by comparing it to Earth thermal structure data and to existing climate and radiative transfer tools. We produce partially-clouded Earth-like climates with cloud structures that are representative of deep tropospheric convection and are adequate 1D representations of clouds within rocky planet atmospheres. After validation against Earth, we then use our partially clouded climate model and explore the potential climates of super-Earth exoplanets with secondary nitrogen-dominated atmospheres which we assume are abiotic. We also couple the partially clouded climate model to a full-physics, line-by-line radiative transfer model and generate high-resolution spectra of simulated climates. These self-consistent climate-to-spectral models bridge the gap between climate modeling efforts and observational studies of rocky worlds.

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arXiv2022

From Data to Software to Science with the Rubin Observatory LSST

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) dataset will dramatically alter our understanding of the Universe, from the origins of the Solar System to the nature of dark matter and dark energy. Much of this research will depend on the existence of robust, tested, and scalable algorithms, software, and services. Identifying and developing such tools ahead of time has the potential to significantly accelerate the delivery of early science from LSST. Developing these collaboratively, and making them broadly available, can enable more inclusive and equitable collaboration on LSST science. To facilitate such opportunities, a community workshop entitled "From Data to Software to Science with the Rubin Observatory LSST" was organized by the LSST Interdisciplinary Network for Collaboration and Computing (LINCC) and partners, and held at the Flatiron Institute in New York, March 28-30th 2022. The workshop included over 50 in-person attendees invited from over 300 applications. It identified seven key software areas of need: (i) scalable cross-matching and distributed joining of catalogs, (ii) robust photometric redshift determination, (iii) software for determination of selection functions, (iv) frameworks for scalable time-series analyses, (v) services for image access and reprocessing at scale, (vi) object image access (cutouts) and analysis at scale, and (vii) scalable job execution systems. This white paper summarizes the discussions of this workshop. It considers the motivating science use cases, identified cross-cutting algorithms, software, and services, their high-level technical specifications, and the principles of inclusive collaborations needed to develop them. We provide it as a useful roadmap of needs, as well as to spur action and collaboration between groups and individuals looking to develop reusable software for early LSST science.

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arXiv2022

Physical Characterization of 2015 JD1: A Possibly Inhomogeneous Near-Earth Asteroid

The surfaces of airless bodies such as asteroids are exposed to many phenomena that can alter their physical properties. Bennu, the target of the OSIRIS-REx mission, has demonstrated how complex the surface of a small body can be. In 2019 November, the potentially hazardous asteroid 2015 JD1 experienced a close approach of 0.0331 au from the Earth. We present results of the physical characterization of 2015 JD1 based on ground-based radar, spectroscopy, and photometric observations acquired during 2019 November. Radar polarimetry measurements from the Arecibo Observatory indicate a morphologically complex surface. The delay-Doppler images reveal a contact-binary asteroid with an estimated visible extent of ~150 m. Our observations suggest that 2015 JD1 is an E-type asteroid with a surface composition similar to aubrites, a class of differentiated enstatite meteorites. The dynamical properties of 2015 JD1 suggest it came from the $ν_6$ resonance with Jupiter, and spectral comparison with major E-type bodies suggest that it may have been derived from a parental body similar to the progenitor of the E-type (64) Angelina. Significantly, we find rotational spectral variation across the surface of 2015 JD1 from red to blue spectral slope. Our compositional analysis suggests that the spectral slope variation could be due to the lack of iron and sulfides in one area of the 2015 JD1 and/or differences in grain sizes.

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arXiv2021

GPU-Enabled Searches for Periodic Signals of Unknown Shape

Recent and future generation observatories will enable the study of variable astronomical phenomena through their time-domain capabilities. High temporal fidelity will allow for unprecedented investigations into the nature of variable objects -- those objects that vary in brightness over time. A major bottleneck in data processing pipelines is constructing light curve solutions for catalogs of variable objects, as it is well-known that period finding algorithms are computationally expensive. Furthermore, there are many period finding algorithms that are often suited for specific science cases. In this paper, we present the first GPU-accelerated Super Smoother algorithm. Super Smoother is general purpose and uses cross-validation to fit line segments to a time series, and as such, is more computationally expensive than other algorithms, such as Lomb-Scargle. Because the algorithm requires making several scans over the input time series for a tested frequency, we also propose a novel generalized-validation variant of Super Smoother that only requires a single scan over the data. We compare the performance of our algorithms to analogous parallel multi-core CPU implementations on three catalogs of data, and show that it is generally advantageous to use the GPU algorithm over the CPU counterparts. Furthermore, we demonstrate that our single-pass variant of Super Smoother is roughly equally as accurate at finding correct period solutions as the original algorithm. Our software supports several features, such as batching the computation to eliminate the possibility of exceeding global memory on the GPU, processing a single object or batches of objects, and we allow for scaling the algorithm across multiple GPUs.

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arXiv2021

Optimization of the Observing Cadence for the Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time: a pioneering process of community-focused experimental design

Vera C. Rubin Observatory is a ground-based astronomical facility under construction, a joint project of the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy, designed to conduct a multi-purpose 10-year optical survey of the southern hemisphere sky: the Legacy Survey of Space and Time. Significant flexibility in survey strategy remains within the constraints imposed by the core science goals of probing dark energy and dark matter, cataloging the Solar System, exploring the transient optical sky, and mapping the Milky Way. The survey's massive data throughput will be transformational for many other astrophysics domains and Rubin's data access policy sets the stage for a huge potential users' community. To ensure that the survey science potential is maximized while serving as broad a community as possible, Rubin Observatory has involved the scientific community at large in the process of setting and refining the details of the observing strategy. The motivation, history, and decision-making process of this strategy optimization are detailed in this paper, giving context to the science-driven proposals and recommendations for the survey strategy included in this Focus Issue.

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arXiv2021

Fast Period Searches Using the Lomb-Scargle Algorithm on Graphics Processing Units for Large Datasets and Real-Time Applications

Computing the periods of variable objects is well-known to be computationally expensive. Modern astronomical catalogs contain a significant number of observed objects. Therefore, even if the period ranges for particular classes of objects are well-constrained due to expected physical properties, periods must be derived for a tremendous number of objects. In this paper, we propose a GPU-accelerated Lomb-Scargle period finding algorithm that computes periods for single objects or for batches of objects as is necessary in many data processing pipelines. We demonstrate the performance of several optimizations, including comparing the use of shared and global memory GPU kernels and using multiple CUDA streams to copy periodogram data from the GPU to the host. Also, we quantify the difference between 32-bit and 64-bit floating point precision on two classes of GPUs, and show that the performance degradation of using 64-bit over 32-bit is greater on the CPU than a GPU designed for scientific computing. We find that the GPU algorithm achieves superior performance over the baseline parallel CPU implementation, achieving a speedup of up to 174.53$\times$. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory will carry out the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). We perform an analysis that shows we can derive the rotation periods of batches of Solar System objects at LSST scale in near real-time, which will be employed in a future LSST event broker. All source code has been made publicly available.

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arXiv2021

The Sizes and Albedos of Centaurs 2014 YY $_{49}$ and 2013 NL $_{24}$ from Stellar Occultation Measurements by RECON

In 2019, the Research and Education Collaborative Occultation Network (RECON) obtained multiple-chord occultation measurements of two centaur objects: 2014 YY$_{49}$ on 2019 January 28 and 2013 NL$_{24}$ on 2019 September 4. RECON is a citizen-science telescope network designed to observe high-uncertainty occultations by outer solar system objects. Adopting circular models for the object profiles, we derive a radius $r=16^{+2}_{-1}$km and a geometric albedo $p_V=0.13^{+0.015}_{-0.024}$ for 2014 YY$_{49}$, and a radius $r=66 ^{+5}_{-5}$km and geometric albedo $p_V = 0.045^{+0.006}_{-0.008}$ for 2013 NL$_{24}$. To the precision of these measurements, no atmosphere or rings are detected for either object. The two objects measured here are among the smallest distant objects measured with the stellar occultation technique. In addition to these geometric constraints, the occultation measurements provide astrometric constraints for these two centaurs at a higher precision than has been feasible by direct imaging. To supplement the occultation results, we also present an analysis of color photometry from the Pan-STARRS surveys to constrain the rotational light curve amplitudes and spectral colors of these two centaurs. We recommend that future work focus on photometry to more deliberately constrain the objects' colors and light curve amplitudes, and on follow-on occultation efforts informed by this astrometry.

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arXiv2021

Space Weathering within C-Complex Main Belt Asteroid Families

Using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Moving Object Catalog, we study color as a function of size for C-complex families in the Main Asteroid Belt to improve our understanding of space weathering of carbonaceous materials. We find two distinct spectral slope trends: Hygiea-type and Themis-type. The Hygiea-type families exhibit a reduction in spectral slope with increasing object size until a minimum slope value is reached and the trend reverses with increasing slope with increasing object size. The Themis family shows an increase in spectral slope with increasing object size until a maximum slope is reached and the spectral slope begins to decrease slightly or plateaus for the largest objects. Most families studied show the Hygiea-type trend. The processes responsible for these distinct changes in spectral slope affect several different taxonomic classes within the C-complex and appear to act quickly to alter the spectral slopes of the family members.

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