Visible and Infrared Photometry of Six Centaurs

✍ Scribed by John K. Davies; Neil McBride; Sara L. Ellison; Simon F. Green; David R. Ballantyne

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 428 KB
• Volume: 134
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0019-1035
• DOI: 10.1006/icar.1998.5931

✦ Synopsis

tune. They are believed to be objects which have been perturbed from the inner edge of what has become known

We present infrared ( JHK ) and visible (VRI ) observations of the Centaurs 2060 Chiron, 5145 Pholus, 7066 Nessus, 1995 as the Kuiper Belt 3 by the gravitational influences of Nep-DW 2 , 1995 GO, and 1997 CU 26 . These are combined whenever tune and Uranus. Their properties have been reviewed by possible to derive relative reflectance spectra between 0.55 and Stern and Campins (1996) and in the introductions to re-2.2 m. The extreme visible to infrared color of Pholus found cent observational papers such as that of Romanishin et in 1992 is confirmed, as is the redness of 7066 Nessus. We al. (1997). Recently, Jedicke and Herron (1997) estimated refine the rotation period and lightcurve of 1995 GO and resolve that there must be fewer than ȁ2000 Centaurs of which ambiguous determinations of its V-R color. We find that 1997 only 3 would have diameters greater than about 200 km. CU 26 has V-JHK colors very similar to 1995 GO. Our data Photometric (e.g., Luu and Jewitt 1996, Davies et al. imply changes in the visible-IR color of 2060 Chiron with level 1996, Romanishin et al. 1997) and spectroscopic (e.g.,

of cometary activity and, aware of the difficulties of combining nonsimultaneous data, we comment on the likely reality of Davies et al. 1993, Luu et al. 1994) observations have shown these. We find a wide range of reflectances within the Centaur that there is considerable diversity among the Centaurs, population with no obvious correlations with heliocentric ranging from 2060 Chiron, which is active and has neutral distance.