Related papers: The Sizes of Kuiper Belt Objects
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 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…
Microlensing and occultation are generally studied in the geometric optics limit. However, diffraction may be important when recently discovered Kuiper-Belt objects (KBOs) occult distant stars. In particular the effects of diffraction…
The classical Kuiper belt contains objects both from a low-inclination, presumably primordial, distribution and from a high-inclination dynamically excited population. Based on a sample of classical TNOs with observations at thermal…
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…
In this letter, we call attention to a gap in binaries in the Kuiper belt in the mass range between $\approx$10$^{19}$-10$^{20}$ kg, with a corresponding dearth in binaries between 4th and 5th absolute magnitude $H$. The low-mass end of the…
We present a new near-infrared photometric system for detection of water ice and methane ice in the solar system. The system consists of two medium-band filters in the K-band region of the near-infrared, which are sensitive to water ice and…
Binaries in the Kuiper Belt are common. Here we present our analysis of the Solar System Origins Legacy Survey (SSOLS) to show that using a PSF-fitting method can roughly double the number of binaries identified in that dataset. Out of 198…
We present the discovery of three new Scattered Kuiper Belt Objects (SKBOs) from a wide-field survey of the ecliptic. This continuing survey has to date covered 20.2 square degrees to a limiting red magnitude of 23.6. We combine the data…
Ever since the very first photometric studies of Centaurs and Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) their visible color distribution has been controversial. That controversy gave rise to a prolific debate on the origin of the surface colors of these…
The proposed field-of-view of the Kepler mission is at an ecliptic latitude of ~55 degrees, where the surface density of scattered Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) is a few percent that in the ecliptic plane. The rate of occultations of Kepler…
We analyze albedo data obtained using the Herschel Space Observatory that reveal the existence of two distinct types of surface among midsized transneptunian objects. A color-albedo diagram shows two large clusters of objects, one redder…
The results of a search for sub-km Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) with the method of serendipitous stellar occultations are reported. Photometric time series were obtained on the 1.8m telescope at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory (DAO) in…
This chapter reviews accretion models for Kuiper belt objects (KBOs), discussing in particular the compatibility of the observed properties of the KBO population with the streaming instability paradigm. Then it discusses how the dynamical…
We report the statistical detection (at the >99% confidence level) of a population of 28th magnitude objects exhibiting proper motions of ~1 arcsecond per hour at quadrature in deep HST/WFPC2 images. The drift directions imply a…
We show the effects of the perturbation caused by a passing by star on the Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) of our Solar System. The dynamics of the Kuiper belt (KB) is followed by direct $N$-body simulations. The sampling of the KB has been done…
The limiting magnitude of the HST data set used by Cochran et al. (1995) to detect small objects in the Kuiper belt is reevaluated, and the methods used are described in detail. It is shown, by implanting artificial objects in the original…
We preliminarily investigate the impact of the Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) and of the asteroid ring on some proposed high-precision tests of Newtonian and post-Newtonian gravity to be performed in the Solar System by means of spacecraft in…
We present a new analysis of the currently available orbital elements for the known Kuiper belt objects. In the non-resonant, main Kuiper belt we find a statistically significant relationship between an object's absolute magnitude (H) and…