How many Vulcanoids are there?
While there are no known Vulcanoids as of 15 October 2005, there are potentially many Vulcanoids with a diameter > 1km that may exist. In 2000, a team led by Dr. Durda (Southwest Research Institute) used images from the Large-Angle Spectroscopic Coronagraph aboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft to conduct the most extensive search to date. They searched for Vulcanoids as faint as magnitude +8.0. Even though Durda’s team failed to find any Vulcanoids, the existence of fainter ones is clearly a possibility. If the largest Vulcanoids are just under Durda’s search limits, then the Dohnanyi power-law implies there could be as many as 1,800 to 42,000 Vulcanoids larger than 1 km! See http://www.boulder.swri.edu/preprints/preprint.cgi?submit=Display&id=184 for more information on Dr. Durda’s SOHO search.
