TDF: Mike Brown (Caltech): Connecting the dots in a transient survey: using CRTS to find slow moving objects in the solar system

The Catalina Sky Survey searches for fast-moving asteroids over a large fraction of the visible sky. Each of the two telescopes used for the survey covers a few square degrees of sky at a time and repeats imaging of single fields ~4 times in ~1 hour. Fields are revisited several to dozens of times over an observing season. The high repeat cadence of this survey has allowed the creation of the Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey to detect new transients in the fields in real time. Some of these transients will be solar system objects moving too slowly to have been detected by in the Catalina Sky Survey. The solar system objects will appear as transients multiple times in different locations acr minutes to degrees apart. We have developed techniques to take the entire data base of a few billion detections, pass combinations through a Keplerian filter, and find real objects. All known bright Kuiper belt objects are found. In addition, any bright Kuiper belt object in the sky left to be discovered will be found in this survey.