IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v462y2009i7275d10.1038_nature08608.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A single sub-kilometre Kuiper belt object from a stellar occultation in archival data

Author

Listed:
  • H. E. Schlichting

    (249-17, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA
    CITA, University of Toronto, 60 St George Street, Ontario, M5S 3H8, Canada)

  • E. O. Ofek

    (249-17, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA)

  • M. Wenz

    (Goddard Space Flight Center, 8800 Greenbelt Road, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771, USA)

  • R. Sari

    (249-17, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA
    Racah Institute of Physics, Hebrew University)

  • A. Gal-Yam

    (Faculty of Physics, Weizmann Institute of Science, POB 26, Rehovot 76100, Israel)

  • M. Livio

    (Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, Maryland 21218, USA)

  • E. Nelan

    (Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, Maryland 21218, USA)

  • S. Zucker

    (Tel Aviv University)

Abstract

Kuiper belt occultations Kuiper belt objects occupy a region of the Solar System beyond the orbit of Neptune. Many — including the dwarf planets Pluto, Haumea and Makemake — are more than 100 km in diameter. At the opposite end of the scale, sub-kilometre-sized objects cannot be observed directly. But they should be detectable as occultations of background stars and one such detection is now reported. A survey of archival data reveals an occultation by a body with a radius of about 500 metres at a distance of 45 astronomical units (Neptune orbits at about 30 AU) from the Sun. The fact that just one event was found in the survey suggests a deficit of sub-kilometre bodies, compared to that expected from extrapolation of the population of '50-km' bodies: this may mean that the smaller Kuiper belt objects are gradually disappearing as they collide with one another.

Suggested Citation

  • H. E. Schlichting & E. O. Ofek & M. Wenz & R. Sari & A. Gal-Yam & M. Livio & E. Nelan & S. Zucker, 2009. "A single sub-kilometre Kuiper belt object from a stellar occultation in archival data," Nature, Nature, vol. 462(7275), pages 895-897, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:462:y:2009:i:7275:d:10.1038_nature08608
    DOI: 10.1038/nature08608
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature08608
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/nature08608?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:462:y:2009:i:7275:d:10.1038_nature08608. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.