Co-investigator Stephen M Slivan
Project Website http://occult.mit.edu/index.php
The MIT Planetary Astronomy Laboratory (PAL) is part of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences and also part of astronomy at MIT. The group studies the solar system using a variety of techniques and telescopes. For details we invite you to view our research pages.
PAL also operates the Wallace Astrophysical Observatory in Westford, MA and utilize telescopes all over the world for our research, including the two 6.5-m Magellan telescopes at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile and the IRTF on Mauna Kea. Instrumentation is another of our interests, as it allows us to specifically pursue our research objectives. Active projects include MagIC, a CCD camera currently mounted on one of the Magellan telescopes, a camera for Wallace Astrophysical Observatory (WAOCam), and POETS, a portable, high-speed occultation camera system.
The group studies the solar system using a variety of techniques and telescopes. In recent years, we have concentrated our efforts on small bodies in the outer solar system (e.g. Pluto, Triton, and Kuiper Belt objects). One of the specialties is to observe these bodies when they pass in front of stars (stellar occultations), from which we can learn about their sizes, shapes, and atmospheres. PAL also works with colleagues at other institutions to survey the sky for Kuiper Belt objects, and from this work we have become interested in the dynamics of the Kuiper Belt, the colors of the objects, and binary objects (the PAL group has discovered three).