The Distant TNOs measured by The Classical and Large-a Solar System
Session 4.02 Surveys
Tuesday 06-25 | 11:20 - 11:40

Here we present results of CLASSY: the Classical and Large-A Solar SYstem survey. This 2-year Large Program on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope is allocated 75 nights from 2022B through 2024A inclusive, with extension into 25B to accommodate time loss due to equipment failure. Using shift'n'stack techniques, CLASSY is surveying 6 independent pointings (12.2 square degrees total) of the cold classical belt's forced midplane, achieving depths of r26.8 in search of Kuiper Belt Objects and extreme trans-Neptunian objects (eTNOs). Field opposition locations are chosen to be spaced as evenly as possible and span a two month window (AS: Aug–Sept, ON, JF, MA, MJ, JA). By design each field is visited in 5 visits across the first year (discovery), and are tracked to a second opposition one year later for some fields, and 2 years later for others (tracking). All discovery fields have been acquired, with one field having received the full 2-year complement. This presentation will focus on the second of CLASSY's primary goals: to test cosmogonic models of orbital emplacement and measure the mass of the distant population, particularly at large semimajor axes (a>100 au). To facilitate this science goal, CLASSY is the first survey designed explicitly to avoid longitudinal discovery biases that may be present in the known eTNOs sample. At time of writing, two of the six fields have undergone preliminary search efforts linking all of the discovery year observations of each field. Amongst the more than 200 new TNOs discovered, only a handful of objects have semi-major axis measurements consistent with being eTNOs. Though with only 2-month arcs the semi-major axes are insufficiently precise for proper classification, and none have distances larger than d55 au. We will discuss implications for the purported distant population, and discuss implications for the alignment of eTNOs.

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