The serendipitous detection of stellar occultations by Outer Solar System objects is a powerful method for ascertaining the small end ( r \lesssim 15 km ) of the size distribution of Kuiper Belt Objects and may potentially allow the exploration of objects as far out as the Oort Cloud .
The design and implementation of an occultation survey is aided by a detailed understanding of how diffraction and observational parameters affect the detection of occultation events .
In this study , stellar occultations are simulated , accounting for diffraction effects , finite source sizes , finite bandwidths , stellar spectra , sampling , and signal-to-noise .
Finally , the possibility of detecting small Outer Solar System objects from the Kuiper Belt all the way out to the Oort Cloud is explored for three photometric systems : a proposed space telescope , Whipple ( 19 ) , the Taiwanese-American Occultation Survey ( 26 ) , and the Multi Mirror Telescope ( 4 ) .