Keck Pencil-Beam Survey for Faint Kuiper Belt Objects
- Creators
- Chiang, E. I.
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Brown, M. E.
Abstract
We present the results of a pencil-beam survey of the Kuiper Belt using the Keck 10 m telescope. A single 0.01 deg^2 field is imaged 29 times for a total integration time of 4.8 hr. Combining exposures in software allows the detection of Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) having visual magnitude m_V ≾ 27.9. Two new KBOs are discovered. One object having m_V = 25.5 lies at a probable heliocentric distance R ≈ 33 AU. The second object at m_V = 27.2 is located at R ≈ 44 AU. Both KBOs have diameters of about 50 km, assuming comet-like albedos of 4%. Data from all surveys are pooled to construct the luminosity function from m_R = 20 to 27. The cumulative number of objects per square degree, Σ(
Additional Information
© 1999 American Astronomical Society. Received 1999 March 8; accepted 1999 May 19. Data were obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the Universities of California, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. We thank Jane Luu for providing detection efficiencies for the LJ98 data, Peter Goldreich and Sarah Stewart for helpful discussions, and an anonymous referee for a careful reading of this manuscript. E. I. C. gratefully acknowledges support from an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.Attached Files
Published - 1538-3881_118_3_1411.pdf
Accepted Version - 9905292.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 34540
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20120928-112912063
- W. M. Keck Foundation
- NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
- Created
-
2012-09-28Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS)