Related papers: The Size Distribution of Kuiper belt objects for D…
About 2500 square degrees of sky south of declination -25 degrees and/or near the galactic plane were surveyed for bright outer solar system objects. This survey is one of the first large scale southern sky and galactic plane surveys to…
I show that the WFIRST microlensing survey will enable detection and precision orbit determination of Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) down to H_=28.2 over an effective area of about 17 sq.deg. Typical fractional period errors will be about 1.5%…
The size distribution in the cold classical Kuiper belt can be approximated by two idealized power laws: one with steep slope for radii R>R* and one with shallow slope for R<R*, where R*~25-50 km. Previous works suggested that the SFD…
A proposed Vera C. Rubin Observatory Deep Drilling micro-survey of the Kuiper Belt will investigate key properties of the distant solar system. Utilizing 30 hours of Rubin time across six 5-hour visits over one year starting in summer 2026,…
The dynamical structure of the Kuiper belt beyond 50 au is not well understood. Here we report results of a numerical model with long-range, slow and grainy migration of Neptune. The model implies that bodies scattered outward by Neptune to…
The cold main classical Kuiper Belt consists of those non-resonant small solar system bodies with low orbital inclinations and orbital semi-major axes between 42.4 and 47.7 au. These objects likely formed \textit{in situ} and the population…
Mean plane measurements of the Kuiper Belt from observational data are of interest for their potential to test dynamical models of the solar system. Recent measurements have yielded inconsistent results. Here we report a measurement of the…
Here we measure the absolute magnitude distributions (H-distribution) of the dynamically excited and quiescent (hot and cold) Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs), and test if they share the same H-distribution as the Jupiter Trojans. From a…
We consider the application of interferometry to measuring the sizes and shapes of small bodies in the solar system that cannot be spatially resolved by today's single-dish telescopes. Assuming ellipsoidal shapes, our results indicate that…
We present a statistical study of the detectability of lightcurves of Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs). Some Kuiper Belt objects display lightcurves that appear "flat", i.e., there are no significant brightness variations within the photometric…
We describe the instrumentation and detection software and characterize the detection efficiency of an automated, all-sky, southern-hemisphere search for Kuiper Belt objects brighter than R mag 21.4. The search relies on Yale University's…
Results from the first two years of data from the Taiwanese-American Occultation Survey (TAOS) are presented. Stars have been monitored photometrically at 4 Hz or 5 Hz to search for occultations by small (~3 km) Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs).…
Occultations provide indirect sensitivity to the number density of small Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) too faint to directly detect telescopically. We present results from the Caltech HI-speed Multicolor camERA (CHIMERA) survey with the…
When a main sequence star evolves into a red giant and its Kuiper Belt Object's (KBO's) reach a temperature of about 170 K, the dust released during the rapid ice-sublimation of these cometary bodies may lead to a detectable infrared excess…
Recent stellar occultations have allowed accurate instantaneous size and apparent shape determinations of the large Kuiper belt object (50000)~Quaoar and the detection of two rings with spatially variable optical depths. In this paper we…
The Kuiper belt includes tens of thousands of large bodies and millions of smaller objects. The main part of the belt objects is located in the annular zone between 39.4 au and 47.8 au from the Sun, the boundaries correspond to the average…
We present the discovery and initial physical and dynamical characterization of the object 2003 UB313. The object is sufficiently bright that for all reasonable values of the albedo it is certain to be larger than Pluto. Pre-discovery…
We present the results of a wide-field survey for distant Sedna-like bodies in the outer solar system using the 1.2-m Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory. We searched ~12,000 square degrees down to a mean limiting magnitude of…
We numerically investigate the possibility that a close stellar encounter could account for the high inclinations of the Kuiper belt, as originally proposed by Ida, Larwood and Burkert, however we consider encounters with pericenters within…
We present high precision, time-resolved visible and near infrared photometry of the large (diameter ~ 2500 km) Kuiper belt object (136108) 2003 EL61. The new data confirm rapid rotation at period P = 3.9155+/-0.0001 hr with a peak-to-peak…