尋找並了解海王星外天體的空間及大小分佈，對了解太陽系的形成與演化有很大幫 助。本篇論文主要描述對於海王星外自動掩星普查計劃 (Transneptunian Automated Occultation Survey II (TAOS II)) 所訂製的光變曲線的模擬程序及資料分析之程 序。TAOS II 將架設三座直徑一點三米之望遠鏡於墨西哥國家天文台，其所要觀測的 主要目標為直徑 0.3 公里至 30 公里的海王星外天體，這些天體因其大小甚小、距離 甚遠，即使以世界上現有的最大口徑之望遠鏡也無法探測到，掩星事件即提供了間接 的方式來偵測這類型的天體。本文針對掩星事件的發生情形，對其光變曲線進行模 擬，以預測可能觀測到的結果，不同於常見的觀測方式，裝備於 TAOS II 上的相機， 將以 20 赫茲的頻率對近萬顆的亮星進行測光，以取得事件發生時(數百毫秒至數十 秒)，極小的亮度變化。基於繞射理論的基礎，此套光變曲線模擬程序，能夠考慮不 同背景星的光譜類型及星等、海王星外天體的尺寸及距離、不同的觀測日期及觀測方 位，以及在地面上不同的觀測位置。因 TAOS II 將對大量的亮星進行高速曝光，可預 期每晚收集到的資料量將極為龐大，擁有一個高效率、高強度且實時的資料分析程序 是必要的。我們將利用前述所生成的光變曲線，進行大規模的分析與測試，並選取適 當的觸發機制，在每日近十萬條的光變曲線中，挑出需要加以分析的段落並將其參數 化，以降低最後比對計算的難度。當中，我們也討論了對於非球形物體的對光變曲線 的影響，也展示了此分析程序實時之成果。;This thesis describes the work done on generating light curves and development of the data analysis pipeline for the Transneptunian Automated Occultation Survey II (TAOS II). The primary aim of TAOS II is to detect Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) with diameters in the range of 0.3 < D < 30 km, objects which are difficult to observe directly. TAOS II consists of three telescopes located at the Observatorio Astronomico Nacional (OAN) at San Pedro Martir (SPM) in Baja California, Mexico. Chapter 1 introduces the current status of outer Solar System science and describes the TAOS II survey in detail. TAOS II will observe as many as 10,000 stars at a cadence of 20 Hz with all three tele- scopes simultaneously. This will produce up to 17 billion photometric measurements per night, and as many as 5.2 trillion measurements per year, corresponding to over 70 million individual light curves. A very fast analysis pipeline for event detection and characteri- zation is needed to handle this massive data set. The pipeline should be capable of real time detection of events (real time meaning within 24 hours of observations) for followup observations of any occultations by larger TNOs, and should be scalable for large simu- lations where many simulated events are added to the observed light curves to measure detection efficiency and biases in event characterization. We discuss the simulation of occultation events that we expect to see in this survey in Chapter 2, and we describe a new analysis pipeline to detect and characterize these events in Chapter 3. In the final Chapter 4, we conclude this work and the future work.
