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  • MEASURING THE ABUNDANCE OF ...
    SCHLICHTING, Hilke E; OFEK, Eran O; SARI, Re'em; NELAN, Edmund P; GAL-YAM, Avishay; WENZ, Michael; MUIRHEAD, Philip; JAVANFAR, Nikta; LIVIO, Mario

    The Astrophysical journal, 12/2012, Letnik: 761, Številka: 2
    Journal Article

    We present here the analysis of about 19,500 new star hours of low ecliptic latitude observations (|b| < or =, slant 20degrees) obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope's Fine Guidance Sensors over a time span of more than nine years, which is in addition to the ~12,000 star hours previously analyzed by Schlichting et al. Our search for stellar occultations by small Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) yielded one new candidate event corresponding to a body with a 530 + or - 70 m radius at a distance of about 40 AU. (4) Regardless of the exact power law, our results suggest that small KBOs are numerous enough to satisfy the required supply rate for the Jupiter family comets. This suggests that small KBOs are undergoing collisional erosion and that the Kuiper Belt is a true analog to the dust producing debris disks observed around other stars.