Other
Scientific paper
Oct 2007
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007dps....39.5203r&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #39, #52.03; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.517
Other
Scientific paper
The size distribution in the Kuiper Belt is unknown for faint objects.
Current differential size distribution estimates give a slope of 4.5+- 0.2 for large end until mR=26 (Petit et al., 2007) but the population of fainter objects (small and far) is unknown.
Observations with the HST (Bernstein et al., 2004) with a limiting magnitude de 28.5 could indicate a very shallow size distribution for small KBOs. The estimated slope would much smaller than expected from collisional equilibrium. It would also be smaller than the estimation of small KBOs numbers deduced from analyse of Triton cratering (Stern and McKinnon, 2000).
It will be very difficult to improve these contradictory results from direct observations. The next advance could come from occultations of background targets. Three independant observations have announced occultations detections of KBOs. Observations of the bright X target Scorpius X1 by the satellite RXTE reveals 12 events compatible with KBOs occultations (Chang et al. 2007). Several occultations detections have been announced by Georgevits et al. (2006). The conditions of these two observations do not allow to measure the distance of the occulting objects. Three events were detected by Roques et al, 2006 but none is in the known Kuiper region.
Occultation is a non reproductible phenomenon. Reliable results can only be obtained from simultaneous detection from two nearby telescope, or by signature of diffraction (expected with a very small target star and good temporal definition of the light curve) or by statistical signature of a large events data set (correlation with direction of observation or with the ecliptic latitude). Moreover, it is very difficult to compare results from different instruments in differents configurations.
Results from three research campaigns with Ultracam are presented with an attempt of comparison with other results and some remarks about instruments best adapted for occultations works.
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