Related papers: Deep Drilling Fields for Solar System Science
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,…
We propose a Roman Space Telescope survey to investigate fundamental properties of the distant solar system in the region of the Kuiper Belt where object characteristics and the size distribution are inaccessible from any other telescope.…
Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) are thought to be the remnant of the early solar system, and their size distribution provides an opportunity to explore the formation and evolution of the outer solar system. In particular, the size distribution…
The population of the Kuiper Belt within 50 AU of the Sun has likely been severely depleted by gravitational perturbations from the giant planets, particularly Neptune. The density of Kuiper Belt objects is expected to be two orders of…
We present here the analysis of about 19,500 new star hours of low ecliptic latitude observations (|b| < 20 deg) obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope's FGS over a time span of more than nine years; which is an addition to the 12,000 star…
Almost all of the $>600$ known Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) have been discovered within 50 AU of the Sun. One possible explanation for the observed lack of KBOs beyond 50 AU is that the distant Kuiper belt is dynamically very cold, and thus…
The small bodies in the Kuiper Belt region of the distant Solar System are leftovers from planet formation. Their orbital distribution today tells us about how giant planets migrated, while their surface properties, shapes, and sizes tell…
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…
The occultation of background stellar sources by foreground Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) can be used to survey physical properties of the KBO population. We discuss statistics related to a KBO occultation survey, such as the event duration…
The Kuiper belt is a remnant of the primordial Solar System. Measurements of its size distribution constrain its accretion and collisional history, and the importance of material strength of Kuiper belt objects (KBOs). Small, sub-km sized,…
The Deep Ecliptic Survey is a project whose goal is to survey a large area of the near-ecliptic region to a faint limiting magnitude (R ~ 24) in search of objects in the outer solar system. We are collecting a large homogeneous data sample…
The search for minor bodies in the solar system promises insights into its formation history. Wide imaging surveys offer the opportunity to serendipitously discover and identify these traces of planetary formation and evolution. We aim to…
Measuring the size distribution of small (km-scale) KBOs can help constrain models of Solar System formation and planetary migration. Such small, distant bodies are hard to detect with current or planned telescopes, but can be identified as…
Existing and planned optical telescopes and surveys can detect artificially-illuminated objects comparable in total brightness to a major terrestrial city out to the outskirts of the Solar System. Orbital parameters of Kuiper belt objects…
The Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) exhibit an orbital clustering of the outer planets lying at perihelion distances larger than Neptune and semimajor axes greater than 150 AU from the Sun. This implies a hitherto unknown dynamical mechanism to…
All the fields of the extended space mission Kepler/K2 are located within the ecliptic. Many solar system objects thus cross the K2 stellar masks on a regular basis. We aim at providing to the entire community a simple tool to search and…
Knowledge of the Kuiper Belt is currently limited to those objects that can be detected directly. Objects with diameters less than $\sim$10km reflect too little light to be detected. These smaller bodies could contain most of the mass in…
Euclid, which is primarily a dark-energy/cosmology mission, may have a microlensing component, consisting of perhaps four dedicated one-month campaigns aimed at the Galactic bulge. We show that such a program would yield excellent…
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%…
We discuss a possibility to survey many Kuiper Belt Objects (KBO) with a single launch using a few smallscale spacecraft, each equipped with solar sails, which could be unfurled from a single interplanetary bus at the perihelion of that…