UPPER LIMITS ON THE NUMBER OF SMALL BODIES IN SEDNA-LIKE ORBITS BY THE TAOS PROJECT

Abstract

We present the results of a search for occultation events by objects at\ndistances between 100 and 1000 AU in lightcurves from the Taiwanese-American\nOccultation Survey (TAOS). We searched for consecutive, shallow flux reductions\nin the stellar lightcurves obtained by our survey between 7 February 2005 and\n31 December 2006 with a total of $\\sim4.5\\times10^{9}$ three-telescope\nsimultaneous photometric measurements. No events were detected, allowing us to\nset upper limits on the number density as a function of size and distance of\nobjects in Sedna-like orbits, using simple models.\n