Date of Award

2026

Degree Name

Physics

College

College of Science

Type of Degree

M.S.

Document Type

Thesis

First Advisor

Dr. Maria Hamilton

Second Advisor

Dr. Que Huong Nguyen

Third Advisor

Dr. Judy Fan

Fourth Advisor

Dr. Steve Croft

Abstract

Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) is poised to revolutionize our understanding of the Solar System. After only a few months of regular operations, Rubin has already discovered over 11,000 new Solar System bodies, and is projected to discover millions more. With discoveries pouring in, and with the development of moving object detection pipelines for routine observing, one key question is: how effectively can Rubin detect and identify objects with anomalous trajectories? The answer is of interest not only for natural bodies in our Solar System, but also in the search for technosignatures, which could be identified as objects exhibiting behavior that is unlikely or impossible to observe in natural bodies. In this thesis, we seek to characterize, first of all, what constitutes “weird” trajectories for Solar System bodies by first analyzing the velocity and acceleration behavior of known objects catalogued in the Minor Planet Center and the JPL Horizons Small Body Database. We next tested Rubin’s ability to detect objects experiencing a range of nongravitational accelerations by assessing two key pieces of the Rubin software suite: the LSST survey simulator, Sorcha, and the moving object linking algorithm, heliolinx, which is integrated into Rubin’s moving object processing system. By modifying Sorcha to incorporate nongravitational accelerations and then running the updated version on input data generated for 2000 Solar System bodies with artificial acceleration components, we found that Sorcha effectively detects objects with nongravitational accelerations from 10−12 to 10−6 au/day2 without a significant drop-off in performance. By running the heliolinx linking algorithm on the resulting Sorcha detections, we similarly found that the number of linkages remains reasonably consistent from the gravity-only case to the maximum nongravitational acceleration magnitude. Additionally, we performed the same analysis on a smaller 1000-object sample, extending up to higher accelerations, and found that the linking fractions drop off significantly between 10−5au/day2 and 10−4au/day2 for A1, between 10−6au/day2 and 10−5au/day2 for A2, and between 10−4 au/day2 and 10−3au/day2 for A3. Based on this analysis, the Rubin pipeline will likely be able to link moving objects with acceleration magnitudes up to those of the highest-accelerating known natural Solar System objects at a highly successful rate, a feature which is beneficial for studies of classes of objects like comets, dark comets, active asteroids, interstellar objects, and other anomalous objects we have yet to discover, whether natural or artificial in origin.

Subject(s)

Observatories.

Solar system.

Astrophysics.

Physics.

Planetary science.

Speed.

Gravitation.

Astronomy.

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