THE CANADA-FRANCE ECLIPTIC PLANE SURVEY-L3 DATA RELEASE: THE ORBITAL STRUCTURE OF THE KUIPER BELT
- Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, National Research Council of Canada, Victoria, BC V9E 2E7 (Canada)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, 6224 Agricultural Road, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC (Canada)
- Space Science and Engineering Division, Southwest Research Institute, 1050 Walnut Street, Suite 400, Boulder, CO 80302 (United States)
- Cornell University, Space Sciences Building, Ithaca, NY 14853 (United States)
- Institut UTINAM, CNRS-UMR 6213, Observatoire de Besancon, BP 1615, 25010 Besancon Cedex (France)
- Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur, BP 4229, Boulevard de l'Observatoire, F-06304 Nice Cedex 4 (France)
- Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
- Departamento de Fisica, Ingenieria de Sistemas y Teoria de la Senal, E.P.S.A., Universidad de Alicante, Apartado de Correos 99, Alicante 03080 (Spain)
- LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, 92195 Meudon Principal Cedex (France)
- Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Corporation, P.O. Box 1597, Kamuela, HI 96743 (United States)
We report the orbital distribution of the trans-Neptunian comets discovered during the first discovery year of the Canada-France Ecliptic Plane Survey (CFEPS). CFEPS is a Kuiper Belt object survey based on observations acquired by the Very Wide component of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey (LS-VW). The first year's detections consist of 73 Kuiper Belt objects, 55 of which have now been tracked for three years or more, providing precise orbits. Although this sample size is small compared to the world-wide inventory, because we have an absolutely calibrated and extremely well-characterized survey (with known pointing history) we are able to de-bias our observed population and make unbiased statements about the intrinsic orbital distribution of the Kuiper Belt. By applying the (publically available) CFEPS Survey Simulator to models of the true orbital distribution and comparing the resulting simulated detections to the actual detections made by the survey, we are able to rule out several hypothesized Kuiper Belt object orbit distributions. We find that the main classical belt's so-called 'cold' component is confined in semimajor axis (a) and eccentricity (e) compared to the more extended 'hot' component; the cold component is confined to lower e and does not stretch all the way out to the 2:1 resonance but rather depletes quickly beyond a = 45 AU. For the cold main classical belt population we find a robust population estimate of N(H{sub g} < 10) = 50 {+-} 5 x 10{sup 3} and find that the hot component of the main classical belt represents {approx}60% of the total population. The inner classical belt (sunward of the 3:2 mean-motion resonance) has a population of roughly 2000 trans-Neptunian objects with absolute magnitudes H{sub g} < 10, and may not share the inclination distribution of the main classical belt. We also find that the plutino population lacks a cold low-inclination component, and so, the population is somewhat larger than recent estimates; our analysis shows a plutino population of N(H{sub g} < 10){approx} 25{sup +25} {sub -12} x 10{sup 3}compared to our estimate of the size of main classical Kuiper Belt population of N(H{sub g} < 10) {approx} (126{sup +50} {sub -46}) x 10{sup 3}.
- OSTI ID:
- 21255730
- Journal Information:
- Astronomical Journal (New York, N.Y. Online), Vol. 137, Issue 6; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/0004-6256/137/6/4917; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1538-3881
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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