Related papers: Kuiper Belt searches from the Palomar 5-m telescop…
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…
We have performed an ecliptic imaging survey of the Kuiper belt with our deepest and widest field achieving a limiting flux of m(g') = 26.4, with a sky coverage of 3.0 square-degrees. This is the largest coverage of any other Kuiper belt…
We have performed a survey of the Kuiper belt covering ~ 1/3 a square degree of the sky using Suprime-cam on the Subaru telescope, to a limiting magnitude of m(R)~ 26.8 (50% threshold) and have found 36 new KBOs. We have confirmed that the…
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…
We present the results of a pencil-beam survey of the Kuiper Belt using the Keck 10-m telescope. A single 0.01 square degree field is imaged 29 times for a total integration time of 4.8 hr. Combining exposures in software allows the…
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…
Here we present observations of 7 large Kuiper Belt Objects. From these observations, we extract a point source catalog with $\sim0.01"$ precision, and astrometry of our target Kuiper Belt Objects with $0.04-0.08"$ precision within that…
The densities of mid-sized Kuiper belt objects are a key constraint into understanding the assembly of objects in the outer solar system. These objects are critical for understanding the currently unexplained transition from the smallest…
We conducted a search for occultations of bright stars by Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) to estimate the density of sub-km KBOs in the sky. We report here the first results of this occultation survey of the outer solar system conducted in June…
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.…
Stellar occultations have been used to search for Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud objects. We propose a search for interstellar objects based on the characteristic durations ($\sim 0.1 \mathrm{s}$) of their stellar occultation signals and high…
Objects in the Kuiper belt are small and far away thus difficult to study in detail even with the best telescopes available at earth. For much of the early history of the Kuiper belt, studies of the compositions of these objects were…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
We present the results of a wide-field survey using the 1.2-m Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory. This survey was designed to find the most distant members of the Kuiper belt and beyond. We searched ~12,000 deg2 down to a mean…
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…
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…