Assigned ID: 728 ----- Attempting Submission 1 (Fri Mar 07 23:11:12 GMT 2008) ----- The measurement of the size distribution of small Kuiper belt objects (KBO) is a powerful tool for testing models of the origin of KBOs, their effective strength and their collisional evolution, as well as models of the origin of the solar system. However, objects smaller than about 10 km in radius are too faint to be directly observed. For the past 14 years, the HST/Fine Guidance Sensors (FGS) have been collecting a large number of photometric measurements of guide stars with 40 Hz time resolution. We propose to use this unique data set to look for occultations of stars by KBOs. We show that this archival proposal will be about two orders of magnitude more powerful than any ongoing search for KBO occultations, and we expect to find between 0.1 to 40 events. Therefore, HST/FGS is in a unique position to detect, for the first time, small KBOs (150 m < r < 1 km) and measure their size distribution.

SOLAR SYSTEM 12 116000 see budget narrative in the proposal false 0.0 0.0 false false false false false SUPPORTED