Pencil-beam surveys for trans-neptunian objects: Limits on distant populations
✍ Scribed by Alex H. Parker; J.J. Kavelaars
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 2010
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 314 KB
- Volume
- 209
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0019-1035
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✦ Synopsis
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 a J 0.7-1.0, these pencil-beam surveys provide stronger upper limits than current estimates in literature.