Pencil-beam surveys for trans-neptunian objects: Limits on distant populations |
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| Authors: | Alex H Parker JJ Kavelaars |
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| Institution: | a Department of Astronomy, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada V8P 5C2
b Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, National Research Council of Canada, Victoria, BC, Canada V9E 2E7 |
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| Abstract: | Two populations of minor bodies in the outer Solar System remain particularly elusive: Scattered Disk Objects and Sedna-like objects. These populations are important dynamical tracers, and understanding the details of their spatial- and size-distributions will enhance our understanding of the formation and on-going evolution of the Solar System. By using newly-derived limits on the maximum heliocentric distances that recent pencil-beam surveys for trans-neptunian objects were sensitive to, we determine new upper limits on the total numbers of distant SDOs and Sedna-like objects. While generally consistent with populations estimated from wide-area surveys, we show that for magnitude-distribution slopes of α ? 0.7-1.0, these pencil-beam surveys provide stronger upper limits than current estimates in literature. |
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| Keywords: | Kuiper Belt Trans-neptunian objects Data reduction techniques |
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