Poster Presentation

A Systematical Method to Search for Active Solar System Objects from the Pan-STARRS Postage Stamp Images

Y.-C. Cheng and W.-H. Ip

We developed a numerical method to analyze the Pan-STARRS postage stamp images on selected targets: 384 asteroids in cometary orbits (ACOs) and 11 main belt comets (MBCs), to search for the possible activity and outgassing event. We enquire the survey data from the end of 2009. In our preliminary result, we had analyzed more than 20,000 postage stamp images by comparing the intensity profile of both background stars and our target ACOs. We get a good detection for one active ACO and all the known active MBCs. We will apply this method as a routine works for the future monitoring on ACOs, Themis, Hilda family asteroids and even Jovian Trojan. Looking forward, our analytic method can also apply to the PTF surveying data on such study.