| Abstract: | The Taiwanese‐American Occultation Survey (TAOS) seeks to determine the number and size spectrum for small (～3 km) bodies in the Kuiper Belt. This will be accomplished by searching for the brief occultations of bright stars (R ～ 14) by these objects. We have designed and built a special purpose photometric monitoring system for this purpose. TAOS comprises four 50 cm telescopes, each equipped with a 2048 × 2048 pixel CCD camera, in a compact array located in the central highlands of Taiwan. TAOS will monitor up to 2 000 stars at 5 Hz. The system went into scientific operation in the autumn of 2005. (© 2006 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim) |
