Bianco, F. B. and Zhang, Z.-W. and Lehner, M. J. and Mondal, S. and King, S.-K. and Giammarco, J. and Holman, M. J. and Coehlo, N. K. and Wang, J.-H. and Alcock, C. and Axelrod, T. and Byun, Y.-I. and Chen, W. P. and Cook, K. H. and Dave, R. and de-Pater, I. and Kim, D.-W. and Lee, T. and Lin, H.-C. and Lissauer, J. J. and Marshall, S. L. and Protopapas, P. and Rice, J. A. and Schwamb, M. E. and Wang, S.-Y. and Wen, C.-Y. (2010) The Taos Project:upper bounds on the population of small kuiper belt objects and tests of models of formation and evolution of the outer solar system. Astronomical Journal, 139 (4). pp. 1499-1514. ISSN 0004-6256 http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20100331-102658014
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Abstract
We have analyzed the first 3.75 years of data from the Taiwanese American Occultation Survey (TAOS). TAOS monitors bright stars to search for occultations by Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs). This data set comprises 5 × 10^5 star hours of multi-telescope photometric data taken at 4 or 5 Hz. No events consistent with KBO occultations were found in this data set. We compute the number of events expected for the Kuiper Belt formation and evolution models of Pan & Sari, Kenyon & Bromley, Benavidez & Campo Bagatin, and Fraser. A comparison with the upper limits we derive from our data constrains the parameter space of these models. This is the first detailed comparison of models of the KBO size distribution with data from an occultation survey. Our results suggest that the KBO population is composed of objects with low internal strength and that planetary migration played a role in the shaping of the size distribution.
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| Additional Information: | © 2010 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2009 July 7; accepted 2010 February 4; published 2010 March 9. The authors thank Scott Kenyon, for insightful conversations. Work at the CfA was supported in part by the NSF under grant AST-0501681 and by NASA under grant NNG04G113G. Work at NCU was supported by the grant NSC 96-2112-M- 008-024-MY3. Work at ASIAA was supported in part by the thematic research program AS-88-TP-A02.Work at Yonsei was supported by National Research Foundation of Korea through grant 2009-0075376 (Space Science Institute). The work of N. Coehlo was supported in part by NSF grant DMS-0636667. Work at LLNL was performed in part under USDOE Contract W-7405-Eng-48 and Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. Work at SLAC was performed under USDOE contract DE-AC02- 76SF00515. Work at NASA Ames was supported by NASA’s Planetary Geology & Geophysics Program. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Subject Keywords: | Kuiper belt: general occultations | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Classification Code: | PACS: 95.10.Gi; 96.15.Bc; 95.85.Kr; 96.30.Xa. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Record Number: | CaltechAUTHORS:20100331-102658014 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Persistent URL: | http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20100331-102658014 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Usage Policy: | No commercial reproduction, distribution, display or performance rights in this work are provided. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| ID Code: | 17828 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Collection: | CaltechAUTHORS | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Deposited By: | Ruth Sustaita | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Deposited On: | 05 Apr 2010 21:46 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Last Modified: | 26 Dec 2012 11:55 |
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