A Survey for Small Asteroids at High Ecliptic Latitudes

Abstract

Some planetesimals scattered by dynamical excitation are pumped up their inclinations. They spend most time in high ecliptic latitude region where the frequency of encounter with planets or resonances and collision between planetesimals are less. High-inclined main-belt asteroids are considered to retain the population and size distribution of such planetesimals.
To investigate them, we performed a survey for small asteroids with high inclination in high ecliptic latitude field. We analyzed the archive data of Subaru Telescope using our new-developed detection method. More than 80 small asteroids were detected in the field of the ecliptic latitude 20^o-50^o. We will discuss their number density and size distribution.