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intermediate

The Canada-France Ecliptic Plane Survey—Full Data Release: The Orbital Structure of the Kuiper Belt

Petit, J.-M. et al. (2011)

Published
Oct 1, 2011
DOI
10.1088/0004-6256/142/4/131

At a GlanceAI

CFEPS full release: 169 well-characterized TNOs show the main classical belt needs hot, stirred and kernel components.

SummaryAI

The Canada-France Ecliptic Plane Survey provides 169 TNOs with high-precision classification and known discovery efficiency. With them the authors show that the main classical belt (a = 40-47 au) needs at least three components: a hot one with a wide inclination distribution and two cold ones (stirred and kernel). Roughly 8000 main-belt objects have Hg <= 8, about half from the hot component. The inner and outer belts are consistent with hot objects only. The paper also introduces the CFEPS Survey Simulator for comparing models with the real belt.

Method SnapshotAI

Characterized wide-field survey, dynamical classification, population modeling through a survey simulator.

BackgroundAI

TNO dynamical classes; observational bias and survey simulators at a conceptual level.