Studentships at ESO Chile

O.Hainaut
(ohainaut@eso.org)
URL: http://www.sc.eso.org/~ohainaut/studentship.html

Note that this is NOT an official ESO web page; it is meant as a summary of the answers I give to questions that are frequently asked. For the official ESO answers, refer to the ESO web.

There are different kinds of studentships at ESO:

Formal ESO studentship. These are 2-years grants for graduate students who are already enrolled in a Ph.D. program in a university. ESO will finance only 2 years, and asks guarantees that funding will be available for the student to complete his thesis. For more details on these studentship, pls check out the ESO Studentship Web Page, which also contains all the information on how to apply.

ESO/Chile Astronomer list

Note that the dead line is Jun.15, although we exceptionally hire an exceptional student at other times of the year.

Short-term/undergraduate studentships.

not

As there is no formal program, there is no formal funding for such studentships! However, some ESO astronomers apply for grants to fund these students. We usually know if we got the funding around mid-December, for the next year.

If the grant is received, the studentship will typically be for 2-4 months, with a decent salary (about 1500Eur/month), and travel expenses paid for by ESO through the astronomer's grant.
If the grant is not received, there is no money. That is, no money at all: no salary, nor travel expenses. If the student is still interested, he has to provide his own financing.

If you want to apply for such studentship, you should send a Curriculum Vitae and a letter of motivation to the astronomer offering the studentship (in english, via email). You should also organize some letter of references to be sent. These letters should be from astronomers or scientist who know you well (ideally who you have already worked with). You may also want to send a copy of your application to Dr Michael West (mwest@eso.org), the scientific director deputy for ESO Chile. If you want to work in the Solar System team, keep reading.

Not for students, but for senior astronomers (some asked...): ESO has a program of Senior Visitors, for experienced astronomers who would like to come to ESO Chile for a collaboration, for a period of 2-4 months. Contact Michael West (mwest@eso.org) if you are interested.

Research group on the Minor Bodies in the Outer Solar System

We are a quite active group of astronomers working on comets, centaurs and transneptunian objects. Currently, the group is composed of

Astronomers: Christophe Dumas, Olivier Hainaut (myself)

We are also deeply involved in various international collaboration, mostly with ESO/Garching, Paris/Meudon, U.Hawaii, Obs. Nat. Japan, and we typically have a "senior visitor" staying at ESO 1-3 month per year.

In the past, we have been quite successful at getting undergraduate studentship grants, and we plan to continue to ask for these grants, so there is a good chance that we can not only offer, but also fund some studentships for next year.

Research Topics

Our group is studying the minor icy bodies in the outer solar system. The main topics are:

Comets:

Physical properties of the cometary nuclei: very little is known on the nuclei of the short period comets, and almost nothing for those of Long Period comets. Indeed, either a comet is close to the Sun, and is then active. The coma surrounding the nucleus then hides it from study. Or the comet is far from the sun and not active, but in this case is very faint. We have a program to study the nuclei of the comets at very large heliocentric distance, using large telescopes. We aim at determining the size distribution of the Short and Long period comets, as well as their colors and obtaining spectra for some of them, in order to constraint their physical nature and evolution/ageing. We also have a project aiming at the determination of their solar phase function, which in turn gives some information on their surface properties.
Cometary nucleus surface structure from the coma morphology: when a comet is active, the morphology of its coma (incl. the presence of jets, fans and other features) reveals the distribution of the activity pattern of the nucleus, providing us with a very powerful way to map their surface.

Trans-neptunian Objects:

Physical properties of Trans-Neptunian Objects. These objects, discovered beyond Neptune, are believed to be the progenitors of the Short-Period Comets in their pristine state. Almost nothing is known on their nature, although they are believed to be similar to the icy satellites of Uranus and Neptune. We use various observational techniques to assess their physical properties. We obtained a lot of telescope time (VLT+NTT) to observed them.
Survey for Trans-Neptunian object: we are engaged in a large program to discover many new Trans-Neptunian Objects, and to determine their orbit, using large, wide-field CCD cameras. The amount of data is so huge (10-40Gb per night) that we have had to develop new data analysis technique for the automatic detection of moving objects in series of CCD images. We are now optimizing these programs in order to allow the real-time processing and analysis of these data.

Asteroids: Christophe Dumas is very active in various programs using adaptive optics to characterize the properties of asteroids and their potential satellites.

Below (next section) are a series of projects that can be offered for short-medium studentship (2-4 months, as in a "stage de DEA"). If you are interested by a PhD, these projects are a little short, but we have plenty of ideas, you should contact us for more details.

All these studentship would be based at ESO in Santiago, with possibility to participate in observations at La Silla and/or Paranal.

Application

To apply, the student should send by email to ohainaut@eso.org

a Curriculum Vitae (in English), mentioning his academic background, AND his previous experience in research (summer jobs, work in lab, etc...), in astronomy (incl. at the amateur level) and more generally any experience that may be relevant (programming skill, etc.)
a letter of motivation (in English)

The student must also organize that we receive some letter of recommendation (at least 2) from persons who knows him (ideally a supervisor, ideally an astronomer). Letter of recommendations from colleagues who we know have significantly more weight.

Everything should be sent to Olivier Hainaut (me) at ohainaut@eso.org

There is no formal dead-line, but I don't promise we will consider anything reaching us after Dec.31 for the next year.

There is no restriction on nationality or sex or race or age or anything, but the student should ideally have a university degree (BA or Masters) in Astronomy, Physics, Computer Science or related. Some knowledge of astronomy is an advantage. General notions of programming (any language) is a plus. A user-level knowledge of Unix would be an advantage. He shall be ready to work on a very irregular schedule, and quite independently . He must have a command of the English language good enough to interact with his colleagues (oral and written), and to read the technical literature. More detailed requirements are listed for each project.

Note that, in the case of under-graduate studentship, we do NOT guarantee anything in terms of graduate studentship. It is possible for an ex-undergraduate to apply for a graduate studentship (Ph.D. student), but without any guarantee (but you would have had 2-4 months to convince us that your are the best student of your generation).

Projects

This is a list of the projects for which we are currently looking for students. Those with a $? are those for which we have formally requested funding, while we did not request a grant for those with a No$ . Projects with $! have been funded. However, these are just examples; if you come up with another project, we could consider it. Also, we have many other projects that are not listed here.

SORRY: the page has not been updated for 2008.

Post-perihelion coma of Comet Hale-Bopp

$? 6700Euros = 4 months + trip from/to Europe + 2 trips to observatories

Since the pre-discovery images at 13AU pre-perihelion, C/1995O1 (Hale-Bopp) has offered a {unique} opportunity to study cometary activity over the widest possible range of heliocentric distances, in particular due to its exceptional brightness and continuing activity at r_h>10AU post-perihelion.

Activity driven by water sublimation is expected to significantly decrease when the comet moves beyond 3-5AU. At this point, solar illumination can still cause the sublimation of more volatile species (like CO, CO2), which are invoked to explain activity at larger r_h. Indeed, cometary activity at large heliocentric distance has been observed in various bodies, such as Halley (major outburst at 14AU), Schwassmann-Wachmann 1 (displaying coma and frequent outbursts at 5.5-7.2AU), Chiron (active at r_h>10AU). Recently, possible cometary activity was reported in TNO (1996TO66 by this team). Dynamically new comets are known to show extraordinary activity at large distances, like C/1987H1 Shoemaker at 23.8AU; this activity is explained by the fact that their very volatile species have not yet been depleted by many passages in the vicinity of the Sun (many of these observations were performed by our team). On the other hand, old short-period comets usually display a very sharp activity cut-off at ~3-5AU, indicating that water is the volatile dominating the activity in these comets.

As Hale-Bopp is a dynamically fairly new comet (having experienced only few passages at perihelion), the monitoring of its activity will allow us to ``calibrate'' the aging process (depletion in volatile species, formation of a dusty crust) affecting comets, by comparing its behaviour to that of other comets in our database. Our team already has a wide dataset of observations of this unique, bright comet since its discovery (from r_h ~7.5AU pre-perih. to our most recent observations in Sept. 2001 at ~13.6AU).

The coma structure has exhibited many very interesting features, most notabely

jets and related structures, which are interpretted as an effect of very localized activity regions on the nucleus,
sub-coma and mini-comets, which are interpretted as large (1-10m, possibly up to >100m) fragments of the nucleus detached from the main body. These could also be related to the secondary nucleus that was discovered and observed by our team (Marchis et al, 1999, A&A, 349, 985-995).

The data from perihelion till mid-2000 are already processed and measured (this was performed in part by two previous students).

Project:
Depending on the level of the student and of what (s)he wants to do, the project can take different possible orientations, which can also be combined.

Data reduction: our monitoring of Comet Hale-Bopp is still under way. A task of the student will be to process these images (flat-field, calibrate), which will give him/her a very good training in data reduction.
Data processing: the images are then processed using various advanced enhacement techniques, such as Laplace adaptive filtering, wavelet filtering, decomposition in radial/tangential components, etc.
Data analysis: the coma structures have to be identified, and measured. From these data, one can determine the characteristics of the various features observed (e.g. number and relative geometry of active regions; number and distribution of mini-comets). Also, the data will be used to produce the heliocentric lightcurve of the object (i.e. mag vs distance), which is a powerful tool to identify the volatile specie(s) causing the activity.

The ideal candidate for this project should be at the level of BA or Masters in astronomy/astrophysics. (S)he should ideally have some training in basic image processing. Some basic skill with programming (any language) and with Unix would be a plus. It is critical that the candidate have good organisational skill, as (s)he will have to deal with large a data-set of many images. It should be noted that this project involves lots of night work, work in altitude, extremely irregular -and dense- schedule. This project will give invaluable experience to a student who want to pursue a carreer in observational astronomy.

Project of previous years

These projects have been completed by students of previous years. They are listed here just to give an idea of what we do.

Nucleus of Long-Period Comets

$OK: 6700Euros = 4 months + trip from/to Europe + 2 trips to observatories

From their orbital distribution, it has been determined that the Long-Period Comets (LPCs) are originating from the Outer Oort Cloud, a spherical shell surrounding the Solar-System at a distance of 20-40kAU. However, the current models of Solar System formation indicate that these objects were originally formed in the Uranus-Neptune region. In short, they are believed to be proto-planetesimals similar to those which accreted into the outer planets, but that were ejected toward the Inner Oort Cloud instead of being accreted. The
Inner Oort Cloud is a stable region, in which a planetesimal can remain undisturbed for times >10^10yr, but which has a slow escape rate mostly toward the Outer Oort Cloud (the main causes of migrations being the galactic tides on the cloud). Once an object reached the Outer Oort Cloud, its orbit is unstable with a time-scale of <10^9yr (because of galactic tides, interactions with nearby stars and/or with large molecular clouds). An planetesimal ejected from the Oort Cloud can fall into the inner Solar System, where its ice start sublimating, forming a Long Period Comet.

Physically, the LPCs are therefore expected to be slightly different of the Short Period Comets (SPCs, which were formed at larger heliocentric distances in the Kuiper Belt, at $40<r<100$AU, therefore at a different temperature and composition). Also, the aging processes that they suffered are significantly different: the LPCs spent most of
their life at very large heliocentric distances, and underwent only one or very few passages close to the Sun, while SPCs were always at moderate heliocentric distances, and have experienced many passages close to the Sun.

At this time, several SPC nuclei have been studied in details (either when flew-by by a space probe, or from the ground when they are at large heliocentric distances and free of coma). Our group has contributed several pieces of knowledge on these objects; e.g. we recently published the first detailed phase function of a nucleus (which reveals information on its surface properties, Delahodde et al, 2001, A&A 376, 672-685), and we are publishing a detailed size distribution (based on 15 nuclei, the largest uniform sample
available, Meech et al, submitted to Icarus), and surface color study (Hainaut & Delsanti, submitted to A&A).

Unfortunately, almost nothing is known about the nuclei of LPCs: only one (Hyakutake) has a reliable estimate for its radius (using Radar techniques), and no nucleus has ever been observed directly. A set of LPCs have been observed by our team over many years as they were moving away from the Sun, in order to study the decrease of activity,
and to eventually observe their bare nucleus. While we obtained a very interesting data-set (which demonstrates that the super-volatile content of LPCs is much higher than that of SPCs), we could not isolate the nuclei. Indeed, even during the last observations at very large heliocentric distances, the comets were still surrounded by a coma. We could only determine that the nuclei are small (typically <1km).

Project:
In order to tackle the question of size distribution of the LPC nuclei, and then of their surface properties, we now want to start planning an observation campaign for the future. The steps will be the following:

For all comets discovered to date, select those that are geometrically interesting, i.e. observable with a large telescope (VLT, Keck, Subaru and Gemini, on which we have access either directly or through collaborations), beyond the region of water sublimation, and far enough from the galactic plane (in order to avoid field crowding).
For those objects, collect all available measurements (from IAUC, MPEC, ICQ and ADS, i.e. all technical or refereed publications)
Develop a simple nucleus model that will constrain the size of the object (from the dust and gas production rates, we can give a minimum size of the object, assuming its surface is 100\% active).
From these measurements, select interesting targets for possible observations (i.e. mag $R<28-29$)
For these objects, obtain observation time to perform the measurements needed.

Steps 1, 2, and 3 will be the task of the student we plan to hire. Depending on his/her level, he will receive more or less assistance with the model (3), and the model will be more or less detailed; this part will be developed in collaboration with a theoretician collaborator (D.Prialnick), who is specialized in icy body modeling.

It is also foreseen to bring the student to the observatories to participate in observing runs for our team.

The ideal candidate for this project should be at the level of BA (Maitrise) or Master's (DEA) in astronomy/astrophysics. (S)he should ideally have some training in observations
(even at the amateur level). Some basic skill with programming (any language) and with Unix would be a plus. It should be noted that this project involves lots of night work, work in altitude, extremely irregular -and dense- schedule. This project will give invaluable experience to a student who want to pursue a carreer in observational astronomy.

Physical Studies of Transneptunians &Centaurs

$OK: 6700Euros = 4 months + trip from/to Europe + 2 trips to observatories

Summary

A coordinated research project on physical properties of Transneptunian and Centaurs Objects, the most pristine, but widely unexplored icy bodies
in our solar system, is performed by an international team of astronomers. This study aims at the establishment of a reliable taxonomic classification scheme for this objects which can be used to investigate their formation and evolution scenarios. The study is based in photometry
and spectroscopy of a large number of these objects (about 80 for photometry, more than 15 for spectroscopy) in the visible and near-IR. In the context of our teamwork the ESO members are responsible for the reduction of the photometry data obtained (BVRI and JHK). The observing programs are and will be executed at ESO Paranal and La Silla and at Calar Alto telescopes. Further observations are expected from collaborations with colleagues in Hawaii (Gemini time granted) and Japan.

In order to guide the object selection for on-going observing campaigns it is a major goal to perform the reduction of the data as soon as possible
after they are obtained and in any case before the next observing run of our group. Therefore, for this task we request DGDF support by a data analysis assistant (in the level of an undergraduate student) for 4 months during 2002.

Background

Transneptunian objects (TNOs) and Centaurs are among the most pristine bodies which survived mostly unaltered from the formation
period of our own solar system. While the dynamical relationships among TNOs and Centaurs as well as with other solar system bodies (like comets) is at least qualitatively understood, their physical nature - and in particular: to which extend they represent the original state of solar system matter -is widely unknown so far.

The dynamical picture: TNOs, Centaurs and comets are all formed in the region of the major planets, most of them in the region of Neptune's orbit and beyond. They are believed to be direct remnants of the formation disk for the planets around the Sun. The major planets have cleaned up the formation disk in their neighbourhood by either ejecting (comets into the Oort Cloud) or swallowing up the planetesimals in this distance range. The likely migration of Neptune to larger solar distances (from about 25 to 32 AU) has removed further objects from the disk, however, incompletely leaving an excited disk of TNOs behind, the Edgeworth-Kuiper-Belt (in the region between 32 to 50 AU from the Sun).
Occasional close encounters of TNOs with Neptune can produce scattered disk objects in very eccentric and long stretched orbits as well as some in less eccentric orbits closer than Neptune. The latter objects (called Centaurs) can cascade towards the Sun by repeated gravitational interactions with the major planets, until Jupiter either captures them as Jupiter family, short-period comet or ejects them into extremely eccentric and sometimes even hyperbolic orbit.

The physical picture: TNOs, Centaurs and Jupiter family comets are all formed from planetesimals in the Edgeworth-Kuiper-Belt. They thus should contain ices (H2O, CO, CO2, CH4, NH3 etc.) and stony, most likely silicate compounds. The named ices are found in short-period comets, while only in a very few TNOs and two Centaur water ice is detected so far. Due to high-energy radiation aging the TNO/Centaur surface can assume a red color, while collisions and internal activity can produce neutral to slightly bluish colors by deposits of material from the body interior (either as cratering ejecta or as re-condensing frost). Consequently, the surface colors of TNOs and Centaurs range from bluish to very red, and most of their spectra are featureless (from UV to near-IR).

The present ''cabinet'' of measured objects comprises: about 65 TNOs with colors in the visible, 12 of them also in near-IR, about 10 TNOs with spectra (in visible, in near-IR), 7 Centaurs with visible and near-IR colors and 5 with spectra, about 15 short-period comets with visible colors, about 5 with spectra, almost no information on the near-IR properties of cometary nuclei is available. The existing data suggest a wide and continuous range of colors for the TNO Cubewanos (color gradients from -5 to 45 %/100nm) while Centaurs, Plutinos and short-period comets seem to be different with disjunct neutral and very red populations. The color diversities appear to be consequences of different
physical surface development over their lifetime involving radiation aging and resurfacing processes mentioned above, but with different net effects depending on the orbit environment and specific individualities of the objects.

At present, the color diversity of the objects is indicative only and various observing programs (including ESO astronomers) are underway to contribute more and improved photometry and spectroscopy of TNOs, Centaurs and short-period comets. The final goal is to establish the necessary, statistically significant database of surface colors (order of 100 objects) and spectra (order of 25 objects) for a synoptic taxonomic classification scheme of the bodies in the outer solar system, i.e. TNOs, Centaurs and short-period comets.

Own work: during the past 3 years photometry and spectroscopy of TNOs (36 objects) and Centaurs (5 object) were obtained by the applicant in various observing programs at ESO telescopes and at Calar Alto/Spain. The results of these programs up to now are presented in three A\&A papers (one published, two in press) and in various conference proceedings (more than 10 contributed papers).

Since April 2001 the ESO Chile group of solar system science partcipates in a ESO Large Program (167.C-0340) which aims for a synoptic study of the physical properties of TNOs and Centaurs using ESO telescopes. The program got about 250h VLT time plus 12 hours at the NTT. PI of the
program is one of the applicants (H. Boehnhardt). In parallel, further and similar observing proposals of our group are submitted to Calar Alto,
TNG and Subaru.

Collaborators for the ground-based observing programs are:

ESO internal: Hainaut (ESO Chile), West (ESO Garching)
Outside ESO: Barrera (Antofagasta, Chile), Barucci (Meudon, France), Birkle (Heidelberg, Germany), Davies (Edinburgh), de Bergh (Meudon, France), Lazarin (Padua, Italy), Meech (Hawaii, USA), Ortiz (Granada, Spain), Rousselot (Besancon), Thomas (Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany), Tozzi (Florence, Italy), Watanabe (Tokyo, Japan)

This proposal asks for support in financing manpower for the data analysis of the on-going and of the future observing programs of the applicants on TNOs and Centaurs.

The Project

A data analysis assistant (undergraduate student) is requested to support the scientific data reduction of our observing programs on TNOs and
Centaurs at ESO and other telescopes.

Project tasks: in the context of the observing programs of our group the applicant has assumed the responsibility for
the data reduction of the photometry in the visible wavelength range. The minimum number of objects to be analyzed is 25-50
for BVRI photometry. While the objects are faint (22-24mag), very accurate photometric (<0.05mag for colors) are required. The data
reduction has to be done in a consistent way for observations using 2-4 different telescope/instrument equipment. The reduction procedure for VLT
and Calar Alto data can be based on existing knowledge and understanding from the past research programs using these equipment. Beyond that also astrometric positions of the objects will be obtained. Finally, our web based archive of observations performed, available data sets
and results will have to be updated.

Tasks to be performed:

debiasing
flatfielding
cosmic ray cleaning
extinction and color coefficients (photometry)
flux calibration
error analysis
graphical presentation of results
preparation of data for TNO/Centaurs database of research team
data/results archiving
update of web page archive

It is envisaged that the data analysis assistant will participate in at least one of the observing runs of our group at ESO telescopes.

Duration: After an initial training of about 1 month, on the average about 1 month of data reduction work is needed for about 20 objects - half the typical amount of photometry data of a VLT service mode images of our program during a single ESO period, i.e. 2 months per period. Archive and web page administration plus writing the final report will require another month of work. In total we expect a duration of 4 months
for this project.

Qualification of data analysis assistant: undergraduate student in astronomy or physics - experience in data reduction of photometry desirable.

A complete color survey of the Centaur Population

2000-Oct-01 No funding requested- No$

The Centaurs are icy bodies orbitting in the 10-40 AU region. They are believed to have formed in the Kuiper Belt (i.e. outside of 40AU), and then have been kicked in a more interior region of the solar system through interactions with Uranus and mostly Neptune. Because of the vicinity of major planets, their orbits are cahotic, and their lifetime is rather short (few Myr). They are extremelly interesting for the understanding of the outer solar system physics, indeed they are supposed to be very similar to the TNOs, but they are much closer to us, therefore we can study them in greater details. We embarqued in a project aimed at obtaining colors (in the Visible BVRI bands and IR, JHK) of all Centaurs, in order to characterize this population. For this purpose, we secured observation time on ESO's NTT and VLT as well as several other facilities at other observatories.

The student will be involved in this observational project, for which (s)he will perform observations on ESO's NTT and/or VLT at La Silla and Paranal resp. (s)He will learn how to operate the complex instruments in an optimized way, and how to perform and calibrate observations of faint objects. (s)He will also learn how to process CCD and IR astronomical images in order to correct them for the instrument signature, and how to measure the magnitude and colors of these objects.

The ideal candidate for this project should be at the level of BA or Masters in astronomy/astrophysics. (S)he should ideally have some training in observations (even at the amateur level) and in basic image processing. Some basic skill with programming (any language) and with Unix would be a plus. It should be noted that this project involves lots of night work, work in altitude, extremely irregular -and dense- schedule. This project will give invaluable experience to a student who want to pursue a carreer in observational astronomy.

Modelling of the color diversity of minor bodies in the outer Solar System

2000-Oct-01 $!

Various dynamical populations are found in the outer Solar System:

The "Main Belt TNOs," or Cubiwanos (after 1992 QB1), in the 40-45 AU range. Their orbits are fairly circular and moderately inclined, but are not primordial. Indeed, perturbations by Uranus and Neptune have raised their eccentricities.
The Plutinos (after Pluto), trapped in resonnance with Neptune, their eccentricity and inclinations have been pumped to higher values.
The Centaurs, on highly eccentric orbits in the 10-30AU range. These are beleived to have been kicked out the TNO region by interaction with the planets.
The Scattered Disk objects, on highly eccentric orbits in the >30 AU range. As the Centaurs, they are beleived to have been kicked out of the TNO region by the planets.
The Short Period comets: on very eccentric orbits, with a perihelion distance < 5AU. These are either Centaurs that continued to drift in the inner solar, or collisional fragments of the TNOs.
an additional hypothetic class exists: the Cold Disk, with very circular, very low inclination orbits at a>45AU. These would be beyond the reach of the planets, and would still be on their formation orbits.

All these objects present color indexes covering a broad range. Untill now, no correlation has been found between the color and the class, although until very recently, not enough data were available to draw any meaningful conclusion.
We embarked in the building of a complete database of all measured colors, which allows us to perform the first valid statistical analysis.

Various phenomena are causing the changes of surface colors; the starting point would be a TNO completely covered with fresh ice, with a grey-blue color.

Irradiation: the exposure of the surface to high energy radiation (cosmic rays, interstellar UV, etc...) causes a photo-degradation of the organic molecules contained in the ice. The result is a slow reddening of the surface, possibly accompanied by a darkening. A TNO that would be left alone for a few million year would end up covered by a very dark, very red layer.
Collision: although not frequent (and the frequency is different for the different classes), collision can happen. Not only the collision will dig a hole through the reddened surface, thus exposing the fresh ice, but will also cover part of the surface with debris from the collision. The result is a "reset" of part of the surface to the initial blue-grey color
Cometary activity: all the comets, at least one centaur, and possibly one TNO display an episodiccometary activity. This corresponds to the sublimation of the ice. The active region (usually covering only a fraction of the surface) has the fresh ice exposed, and covers part of the surface with fresh dust, therefore resetting part of the surface to the initial blue-grey. The activity is made more difficult by the formation of a crust, and by larger heliocentric distances.

These three phenomena will act with different efficiencies depending on the class of object, therefore resulting in different color equilibrium.

We propose to perform a numeric simulation of this problem through a massive Monte-Carlo approach, and compare the results to the observed populations in order to derive some information on the conditions prevailing in the different regions.

The ideal candidate for this project should have a strong background in programming, in numerical analysis and algorythmic tools. Training in Physics/Astronomy/Astrophysics is an advantage. Although this project can be implemented in any programming language, the candidate should realize that he will not get local support in languages other than FORTRAN, and therefore (s)he should be of an even more advanced level if (s)he does not plan to use this language. Although this program does not directly involves observations, the student will have the opportunity to participate in at least one observation run at La Silla or Paranal, for a program aimed at acquiring more TNO colors.

Others

Other project are available; this page will be updated once in a while.

O.Hainaut