Survey of Solar System Objects using KMTNet

Solar system small bodies are unusual objects in astronomical survey data in that they are moving on the celestial sphere. In addition, even in a normal status, their magnitudes are changing over time, firstly because their relative positions with respect to the Sun and Earth are continually changing, secondly because they are rotating bodies with non-spherical shapes. Furthermore, some of them might exhibit unexpected activities, which could be caused by mass ejection or disintegration. Detections and observations of such activities are challenging due to their abrupt nature. Therefore, continuous monitoring observations of large number of Solar system small bodies are required to systematically obtain detailed/transient information about them. Since 2018/2019 winter, we have launched a new project using Korea Microlensing Telescope Network (KMTNet) for detecting such transient phenomena of Solar system objects. Our main goal is to monitor the magnitudes and detect sudden brightness changes. We also plan to discover interesting new objects, and monitor rotational brightness oscillations of asteroids. We intend to monitor the magnitudes of ~ 20,000 known Solar system small bodies per night, and acquire lightcurves of ~ 1,000 asteroids.