Published April 2010 | Version v1
Journal article Metadata-only

THE TAOS PROJECT: UPPER BOUNDS ON THE POPULATION OF SMALL KUIPER BELT OBJECTS AND TESTS OF MODELS OF FORMATION AND EVOLUTION OF THE OUTER SOLAR SYSTEM

Creators

  • 1. Department of Physics, University of California Santa Barbara, Mail Code 9530, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9530 (United States)
  • 2. Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica, P.O. Box 23-141, Taipei 10617, Taiwan (China)
  • 3. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, 209 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104 (United States)
  • 4. Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), Manora Peak, Nainital 263 129 (India)
  • 5. Department of Astronomy and Physics, Eastern University, 1300 Eagle Road, Saint Davids, PA 19087 (United States)
  • 6. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
  • 7. Department of Statistics, University of California-Berkeley, 367 Evans Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720 (United States)
  • 8. Steward Observatory, 933 North Cherry Avenue, Room N204, Tucson, AZ 85721 (United States)
  • 9. Department of Astronomy, Yonsei University, 134 Shinchon, Seoul 120-749 (Korea, Republic of)
  • 10. Institute of Astronomy, National Central University, 300 Jhongda Road, Jhongli 32054, Taiwan (China)
  • 11. Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94550 (United States)
  • 12. Initiative in Innovative Computing at Harvard, 60 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
  • 13. Department of Astronomy, University of California-Berkeley, 601 Campbell Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720 (United States)
  • 14. Space Science and Astrobiology Division 245-3, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035 (United States)

Description

We have analyzed the first 3.75 years of data from the Taiwanese American Occultation Survey (TAOS). TAOS monitors bright stars to search for occultations by Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs). This data set comprises 5 x 105 star hours of multi-telescope photometric data taken at 4 or 5 Hz. No events consistent with KBO occultations were found in this data set. We compute the number of events expected for the Kuiper Belt formation and evolution models of Pan and Sari, Kenyon and Bromley, Benavidez and Campo Bagatin, and Fraser. A comparison with the upper limits we derive from our data constrains the parameter space of these models. This is the first detailed comparison of models of the KBO size distribution with data from an occultation survey. Our results suggest that the KBO population is composed of objects with low internal strength and that planetary migration played a role in the shaping of the size distribution.

Availability note (English)

Available from http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0004-6256/139/4/1499

Additional details

Identifiers

DOI
10.1088/0004-6256/139/4/1499;

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Astronomical Journal (New York, N.Y. Online)
Journal Volume
139
Journal Issue
4
Journal Page Range
p. 1499-1514
ISSN
1538-3881

INIS

Country of Publication
United States
Country of Input or Organization
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
INIS RN
41045992
Subject category
S79: ASTROPHYSICS, COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY;
Descriptors DEI
ECLIPSE; SOLAR SYSTEM; SOLAR SYSTEM EVOLUTION; STARS; TELESCOPES
Descriptors DEC
EVOLUTION