1,2,4,2,2,1,- 1Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, UK
- 2DiRAC Institute and the Department of Astronomy, University of Washington, 3910 15th Ave NE, Seattle, WA
- 3Finnish Centre for Astronomy with ESO, University of Turku, Finland
- 4Department of Aerospace Engineering, Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, USA
- 5Center for Astrophysics — Harvard &Smithsonian, 60 Garden St., MS 51, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
- 6Department of Astronomy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA
- 7LSST Interdisciplinary Network for Collaboration and Computing Frameworks, 933 N. Cherry Avenue, Tucson AZ 85721
- 8McWilliams Center for Cosmology, Department of Physics, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
- 9Rubin Observatory, 950 N. Cherry Ave., Tucson, AZ 85719, USA/ Aston Carter, Suite 150, 4321 Still Creek Drive, Burnaby, BC V5C6S, Canada
Previous wide-field surveys have observed a sharp decline in the radial distribution of Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) around 50 au, known as the Kuiper Cliff. Recently, the New Horizons Subaru TNO (Trans-Neptunian object) Survey found an increase in the radial distribution of KBOs at 70 au (using the shift-and-stack method with a r-band limiting magnitude of 26.5). From these results, Fraser et al. (2024) posit that the existence of a previously unknown secondary belt/population of distant small bodies beyond the Kuiper belt can explain the uptick in detections beyond 70 au.
To further test and constrain this population model, we used data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES). The DES, with a limiting magnitude of 23.8 in r-band, discovered 812 KBOs (Bernardinelli et al., 2022), but none are consistent with a second distant belt of objects. Using the constraints from DES and the New Horizons Subaru TNO Survey, we will examine implications for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory to discover this distant belt if it exists. Starting later this year, the Rubin Observatory will begin science operations and start taking images of the sky as part of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time. The LSST’s capability to detect this distant small body population will be unprecedented, given its significantly increased sky coverage (~20,000 square degrees) and depth (24.5 in r-mag). Alongside predictions for its single exposures, we created predictions for LSST’s discovery rate when using the shift-and-stack techniques in the deep drilling fields, which is expected to push the detection limit to 27 mag.
How to cite: Lyttle, R., Schwamb, M., Bernardinelli, P., Merritt, S., Fedorets, G., Cornwall, S., Jurić, M., Holman, M., Kurlander, J., Eggl, S., Oldag, D., West, M., Kubica, J., Murtagh, J., Jones, L., and Yoachim, P.: Observational Constraints on a Distant Belt Beyond the Kuiper Belt with the Dark Energy Survey and Prospects for Discoverability with Rubin Observatory, EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2025, Helsinki, Finland, 7–12 Sep 2025, EPSC-DPS2025-1036, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc-dps2025-1036, 2025.
