KUIPER BELT SEARCHES FROM THE PALOMAR 5-M TELESCOPE

Motivated by a desire to understand the size distributon of the Kuiper Belt, an observing program was conducted at the Mount Palomar 5-m tel escope from 1994-1996. The observations consisted of follow-up observa tions of known objects (in order to improve their very indeterminate o rbits), and deep exposures on a single field to search for small objec ts below the limiting magnitudes of other surveys. Eighteen object rec overies were successfully obtained over the course of the follow-up pr ogram. Data reduction of the deep fields consisted of a software recom bination of many fields shifted at different angular rates in order to detect objects at differing heliocentric distances. We set an upper l imit of < 1 object per 0.05 square degrees in the ecliptic brighter th an magnitude R similar or equal to 25. The lack of detected objects in this work serves to help constrain the number density of Kuiper Belt comets.