1998/06/25 by Brett Gladman, JJ Kavelaars, Philip D. Nicholson +2
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/300573
Accepted by AJ, 18 pages, including 6 figures
arxiv created 1998/06/25 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
We have conducted pencil-beam searches for outer solar system objects to a limiting magnitude of R ~ 26. Five new trans-neptunian objects were detected in these searches. Our combined data set provides an estimate of ~90 trans-neptunian objects per square degree brighter than ~ 25.9. This estimate is a factor of 3 above the expected number of objects based on an extrapolation of previous surveys with brighter limits, and appears consistent with the hypothesis of a single power-law luminosity function for the entire trans-neptunian region. Maximum likelihood fits to all self-consistent published surveys with published efficiency functions predicts a cumulative sky density Sigma(<R) obeying log10(Sigma) = 0.76(R-23.4) objects per square degree brighter than a given magnitude R.