The Discovery of Halley-sized Kuiper Belt Objects Using HST

Details The Discovery of Halley-sized Kuiper Belt Objects Using HST The Discovery of Halley-sized Kuiper Belt Objects Using HST

1995-09-19

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9509100v1

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

11 pages of text plus three figures attached with epsf macros, uses AASTeX macros (aaspp), to appear in 10 December 1995 Astro

Scientific paper

10.1086/176581

We report the statistical detection (at the >99% confidence level) of a population of 28th magnitude objects exhibiting proper motions of ~1 arcsecond per hour at quadrature in deep HST/WFPC2 images. The drift directions imply a preponderance of objects on prograde orbits concentrated near the ecliptic plane. We interpret this as the detection of objects which reside in the Kuiper belt near or beyond the orbit of Neptune, comparable in size to comet 1P/Halley (radii ~10 km for an albedo of 4%). Our observations imply a population of ~2.5x10^4 objects deg^-2 with V<28.6. This must be viewed as a lower limit until our search of parameter space is complete. Our observations imply that there are >2x10^8 objects of this size in the Kuiper belt with inclinations <12 degrees and within ~40 AU of the Sun.

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