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Abstract We explore the potential of an array of $O\left(100\right)$small fixed telescopes, aligned along a meridian and automated to measure millions of occultations of Gaia stars by minor planets, to constrain gravitational signatures from a “Planet X” mass in the outer solar system. The accuracy of center-of-mass tracking of occulters is limited by photon noise, uncertainties in asteroid shapes, and Gaia’s astrometry of the occulted stars. Using both parametric calculations and survey simulations, we assess the total information obtainable from occultation measurements of main-belt asteroids (MBAs), Jovian Trojans, and trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). We find that MBAs are the optimal target population due to their higher occultation rates and abundance of objects above Legacy Survey of Space and Time detection thresholds. A 10 yr survey of occultations by MBAs and Trojans using an array of 200 40 cm telescopes at 5 km separation would achieve 5σsensitivity to the gravitational tidal field of a 5M_⊕Planet X at 800 au for >90% of potential sky locations. This configuration corresponds to an initial cost of ≈$15 million. While the survey's sensitivity to tidal forces improves rapidly with increasing number of telescopes, sensitivity to a Planet X becomes limited by degeneracy with the uncertain masses of large moonless TNOs. The 200-telescope survey would additionally detect ≈1800 TNO occultations, providing detailed shape, size, and albedo information. It would also measure the Yarkovsky effect on many individual MBAs, measure masses of many asteroids involved in mutual gravitational deflections, and enable better searches for primordial black holes and departures from general relativity. 

Abstract We report the methods of and initial scientific inferences from the extraction of precision photometric information for the >800 trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) discovered in the images of the Dark Energy Survey (DES). Scene-modeling photometry is used to obtain shot-noise-limited flux measures for each exposure of each TNO, with background sources subtracted. Comparison of double-source fits to the pixel data with single-source fits are used to identify and characterize two binary TNO systems. A Markov Chain Monte Carlo method samples the joint likelihood of the intrinsic colors of each source as well as the amplitude of its flux variation, given the time series of multiband flux measurements and their uncertainties. A catalog of these colors and light-curve amplitudesAis included with this publication. We show how to assign a likelihood to the distributionq(A) of light-curve amplitudes in any subpopulation. Using this method, we find decisive evidence (i.e., evidence ratio <0.01) that cold classical (CC) TNOs with absolute magnitude 6 <H_r< 8.2 are more variable than the hot classical (HC) population of the sameH_r, reinforcing theories that the former form in situ and the latter arise from a different physical population. Resonant and scattering TNOs in thisH_rrange have variability consistent with either the HCs or CCs. DES TNOs withH_r< 6 are seen to be decisively less variable than higher-H_rmembers of any dynamical group, as expected. More surprising is that detached TNOs are decisively less variable than scattering TNOs, which requires them to have distinct source regions or some subsequent differential processing.