Mutual orbits and masses of six transneptunian binaries

✍ Scribed by W.M. Grundy; K.S. Noll; M.W. Buie; S.D. Benecchi; D.C. Stephens; H.F. Levison

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 735 KB
• Volume: 200
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0019-1035
• DOI: 10.1016/j.icarus.2008.12.008

✦ Synopsis

The mutual orbits of these systems are found to have periods ranging from 22 to 137 days, semimajor axes ranging from 2360 to 10500 km, and eccentricities ranging from 0.09 to 0.55. These orbital parameters enable estimation of system masses ranging from 0.2 to 9.7 × 10 18 kg. For reasonable assumptions of bulk density (0.5 to 2.0 g cm -3 ), the masses can be combined with visible photometry to constrain sizes and albedos. The resulting albedos are consistent with an emerging picture of the dynamically "Cold" Classical subpopulation having relatively high albedos, compared with comparably-sized objects on more dynamically excited orbits.