7 Summary

We have presented the photometry of an important set of objects (24 TNOs and 3 Centaurs, which represent $\sim$1/3 of the published objects to date) over the visible range (BVRI) from two run of observations (Sep. and Nov. 2000) with an 8 m telescope (ESO/VLT). The objects display a broad and continuous range of colors from neutral-bluish to very red, with no evidence of a bimodal color distribution. The distribution of the objects in the color-color plots shows that, within the error bars, the KBOs display linear reflectivity spectra over the visible (VRI) wavelengths.

Our measurements are compatible with those in the literature. For some of the objects, the availability of several epochs allowed us to detect some possible intrinsic changes such as for 1994 TB, 1995 SM₅₅, 1998 UR₄₃, 1999 CF₁₁₉ and 2000 OK₆₇. It appears that some objects deserve a complete study, such as 1995 SM₅₅ (to look for any possible cometary activity) or 1994 TB (for its spectral slope variability).

No further statistical test was performed on this dataset; a very detailed study of a larger sample including all published colors to date (including the data from this paper) is available in Hainaut & Delsanti (2001).