A deep sky survey of Edgeworth Kuiper belt objects with an improved shift-and-add method

A survey of the minor bodies in the outer regions of our solar system was carried out using the Suprime-Cam attached to the 8.2 m Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea on 2001 February 22 and 25. Seven areas, covering a total of 1.4 deg² of the sky, were scanned. Five of them were observed with an R-mag limit of approximately 25.0, while the remaining two areas (0.4 deg ² area of the sky) had a much deeper imaging, reaching an R-mag limit of 26.0. In order to facilitate our survey, we developed an efficient computer code to detect unknown objects based on an improved shift-and-add method, the validity of which was ascertained from the fact that it could successfully locate the two EKBOs (2001 DM₁₀₈ and 2001 DN₁₀₈) that had been detected in our preliminary analysis. Using our computer code, we discovered three new EKBOs, viz. 2001 DO₁₀₈, 2001 DP₁₀₈, and 2001 DQ₁₀₈, in addition to 2001 DM₁₀₈ and 2001 DN ₁₀₈ The present survey succeeded in finding a total of 14 EKBOs (five were discovered, and nine were detected) within the 0.4 deg² region of the sky observed with an R-mag limit of 26.0.