Published December 2009 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Upper Limits on the Number of Small Bodies in Sedna-Like Orbits by the TAOS Project

  • 1. ROR icon Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica
  • 2. ROR icon National Central University
  • 3. ROR icon University of Pennsylvania
  • 4. ROR icon Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
  • 5. ROR icon University of Arizona
  • 6. ROR icon Yonsei University
  • 7. ROR icon University of California, Berkeley
  • 8. ROR icon Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
  • 9. ROR icon Ames Research Center
  • 10. ROR icon Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology
  • 11. ROR icon California Institute of Technology

Abstract

We present the results of a search for occultation events by objects at distances between 100 and 1000 AU in light curves from the Taiwanese-American Occultation Survey. We searched for consecutive, shallow flux reductions in the stellar light curves obtained by our survey between 2005 February 7 and 2006 December 31 with a total of ~4.5 × 10^9 three-telescope simultaneous photometric measurements. No events were detected, allowing us to set upper limits on the number density as a function of size and distance of objects in Sedna-like orbits, using simple models.

Additional Information

© 2009 American Astronomical Society. Print publication: Issue 6 (2009 December); received 2009 February 28; accepted for publication 2009 October 4; published 2009 November 5. Work at NCU was supported by the grant NSC 96-2112- M-008-024-MY3. Work at the CfA was supported in part by the NSF under grant AST-0501681 and by NASA under grant NNG04G113G. Work at ASIAA was supported in part by the thematic research program AS-88-TP-A02. Work at Yonsei was supported by Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute. 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.

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
16891
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20091207-113202384

Funding

NSC
96-2112-M-008-024-MY3
NSF
AST-0501681
NASA
NNG04G113G
Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy & Astrophysics (ASIAA)
AS-88-TP-A02
Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute
U. S. Department of Energy (USDOE)
W-7405-Eng-48
U. S. Department of Energy (USDOE)
DE-AC52-07NA27344
U. S. Department of Energy (USDOE)
DE-AC02-76SF00515

Dates

Created
2009-12-08
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2021-11-08
Created from EPrint's last_modified field