The Geophysical Environment of (486958) Arrokoth—A Small Kuiper Belt Object Explored by <i>New Horizons</i>

From Kuiper Belt Object to Cometary Nucleus

We now realise that many small body populations are related through a common origin in the Kuiper Belt, notably the Centaurs, the Jupiter Family Comets and certain dead-comets. But does primitive material from the Kuiper Belt survive the journey to the inner solar system and can we learn anything about it by studying the comets? We discuss observational evidence and other considerations that re...

The Chemical Composition of an Extrasolar Kuiper-Belt-Object

The Kuiper Belt of our solar system is a source of short-period comets that may have delivered water and other volatiles to Earth and the other terrestrial planets. However, the distribution of water and other volatiles in extrasolar planetary systems is largely unknown. We report the discovery of an accretion of a Kuiper-Belt-Object analog onto the atmosphere of the white dwarf WD 1425+540. Th...

The Bimodal Color Distribution of Small Kuiper Belt Objects

We conducted a two-night photometric survey of small Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) near opposition using the wide-field Hyper Suprime-Cam instrument on the 8.2m Subaru Telescope. The survey covered about 90deg of sky, with each field imaged in the g and i bands. We detected 356 KBOs, ranging in absolute magnitude from 6.5 to 10.4. Filtering for high-inclination objects within the hot KBO populat...

The Small Numbers of Large Kuiper Belt Objects

We explore the brightness distribution of the largest and brightest (m(R)<22) Kuiper belt objects (KBOs). We construct a luminosity function of the dynamically excited or hot Kuiper belt (orbits with inclinations > 5) from the very brightest to m(R)=23. We find for m(R). 23, a single slope appears to describe the luminosity function. We estimate ∼12 KBOs brighter than m(R)∼19.5 are present in t...

The Kuiper Belt