Pedro Lacerda
Universidade de Leiden

The Kuiper Belt holds a population of small objects orbiting the Sun beyond Neptune which are thought to be remnants of the protoplanetary nebula. The Belt is also the most likely origin of other outer solar system bodies, as Pluto-Charon, Triton, and the short-period comets. By studying this well preserved reservoir of primitive objects we can improve our understanding of the accretional and dynamical processes that took place in the early solar system. One of the simplest and most fundamental physical studies is to study rotational properties of the Kuiper Belt Objects through their lightcurves. From the lightcurves we can extract information on the rotational states and on the shapes of the KBOs and infer their formation and collision environment. We have started a systematic survey with the purpose of obtaining a homogeneous and consistent database of rotational properties of KBOs. In this poster we present lightcurves for 6 KBOs. Future work will involve modeling these lightcurves and deducing the shapes and/or surface albedo variations of these objects.

Grupo de Astronomia da Universidade da Madeira - 2001