A Search for Vulcanoids Using STEREO Heliospheric Imager Data

Details A Search for Vulcanoids Using STEREO Heliospheric Imager Data A Search for Vulcanoids Using STEREO Heliospheric Imager Data

Oct 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010dps....42.1301s&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #42, #13.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.1052

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Interior to the orbit of Mercury, between 0.07 and 0.21 AU, is a dynamically stable region where a population of asteroids, known as Vulcanoids, may reside. As seen from Earth, the Vulcanoid zone lies between 4-12 degrees from the sun, making observations difficult. The best previous search used data from the LASCO C3 coronagraph on the SOHO spacecraft to place an upper limit on the apparent brightness of any Vulcanoids of V=8.0, corresponding to an object diameter of 55km. Here, we present results from our campaign to analyze data from the Heliospheric Imagers aboard NASA's two STEREO spacecraft for Vulcanoids transiting through the instrument's field of view. At present, we have not detected any Vulcanoids, even though our search is sensitive to objects as small as approximately 5 km in diameter--nearly 100 times fainter than the SOHO search. These limits place significant constraints on the formation and evolution of the putative Vulcanoid population.

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