Observations of the distant Kuiper belt

DOI

We present the results of a wide-field survey using the 1.2m Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory. This survey was designed to find the most distant members of the Kuiper Belt and beyond. We searched ~12000deg^2^ down to a mean limiting magnitude of 21.3 in R. A total number of 52 Kuiper Belt objects and Centaurs have been detected, 25 of which were discovered in this survey. Except for the redetection of Sedna, no additional Sedna-like bodies with perihelia greater than 45AU were detected despite sensitivity out to distances of 1000AU. We discuss the implications for a distant Sedna-like population beyond the Kuiper Belt, focusing on the constraints we can place on the embedded stellar cluster environment the early Sun may be have been born in, where the location and distribution of Sedna-like orbits sculpted by multiple stellar encounters is indicative of the birth cluster size. We also report our observed latitude distribution and implications for the size of the plutino population.

Cone search capability for table J/ApJ/720/1691/table1 (Summary of field positions)

Identifier
DOI http://doi.org/10.26093/cds/vizier.17201691
Source https://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/lp/custom/CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/720/1691
Related Identifier https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/720/1691
Related Identifier https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/720/1691
Metadata Access http://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/pmh/pubreg.xml?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_b2find&identifier=ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/720/1691
Provenance
Creator Schwamb M.E.; Brown M.E.; Rabinowitz D.L.; Ragozzine D.
Publisher CDS
Publication Year 2012
Rights https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.html
OpenAccess true
Contact CDS support team <cds-question(at)unistra.fr>
Representation
Resource Type Dataset; AstroObjects
Discipline Astrophysics and Astronomy; Natural Sciences; Observational Astronomy; Physics; Solar System Astronomy