THE TAOS PROJECT: RESULTS FROM SEVEN YEARS OF SURVEY DATA

Journal Article · Mon Jul 01 00:00:00 EDT 2013 · Astronomical Journal (New York, N.Y. Online)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-6256/146/1/14· OSTI ID:22118725

Zhang, Z. -W.; Lehner, M. J.; Wang, J. -H.; Wen, C. -Y.; Wang, S. -Y.; King, S. -K.; Cook, K. H.; Lee, T. ^[1]; Granados, A. P. ^[2]; Alcock, C.; Protopapas, P. ^[3]; Axelrod, T. ^[4]; Bianco, F. B. ^[5]; Byun, Y. -I. ^[6]; Chen, W. P. ^[7]; Coehlo, N. K. ^[8]; De Pater, I. ^[9]; Kim, D. -W. ^[10]; Lissauer, J. J. ^[11]; others, and

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1. Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica. 11F of Astronomy-Mathematics Building, National Taiwan University. No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei 10617, Taiwan (China)
2. Instituto de Astronomia, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Apdo. Postal 106, Ensenada, Baja California 22800 (Mexico)
3. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
4. Steward Observatory, 933 North Cherry Avenue, Room No. 204, Tucson AZ 85721 (United States)
5. Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, New York University, 4 Washington Place, New York, NY 10003 (United States)
6. Department of Astronomy and University Observatory, Yonsei University, 134 Shinchon, Seoul 120-749 (Korea, Republic of)
7. Institute of Astronomy, National Central University, No. 300, Jhongda Road, Jhongli City, Taoyuan County 320, Taiwan (China)
8. Department of Statistics, University of California Berkeley, 367 Evans Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720 (United States)
9. Department of Astronomy, University of California Berkeley, 601 Campbell Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720 (United States)
10. Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Koenigstuhl 17, D-69117 Heidelberg (Germany)
11. Space Science and Astrobiology Division 245-3, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035 (United States)

The Taiwanese-American Occultation Survey (TAOS) aims to detect serendipitous occultations of stars by small ({approx}1 km diameter) objects in the Kuiper Belt and beyond. Such events are very rare (<10{sup -3} events per star per year) and short in duration ({approx}200 ms), so many stars must be monitored at a high readout cadence. TAOS monitors typically {approx}500 stars simultaneously at a 5 Hz readout cadence with four telescopes located at Lulin Observatory in central Taiwan. In this paper, we report the results of the search for small Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) in seven years of data. No occultation events were found, resulting in a 95% c.l. upper limit on the slope of the faint end of the KBO size distribution of q = 3.34-3.82, depending on the surface density at the break in the size distribution at a diameter of about 90 km.

• OSTI ID: 22118725
• Journal Information: Astronomical Journal (New York, N.Y. Online), Vol. 146, Issue 1; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1538-3881
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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