ORBITS AND MASSES OF THE SATELLITES OF THE DWARF PLANET HAUMEA (2003 EL61)

By D. Ragozzine, Michael E. Brown. 2009

139 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Using precise relative astrometry from the Hubble Space Telescope and the W. M. Keck Telescope, we have determined the orbits and masses of the two dynamically interacting satellites of the dwarf planet (136108) Haumea, formerly 2003 EL61. The orbital parameters of Hi'iaka, the outer, brighter satellite, match well the previously derived orbit. On timescales longer than a few weeks, no Keplerian orbit is sufficient to describe the motion of the inner, fainter satellite Namaka. Using a fully interacting three-point-mass model, we have recovered the orbital parameters of both orbits and the mass of Haumea and Hi'iaka; Namaka's mass is marginally detected. The data are not sufficient to uniquely determine the gravitational quadrupole of the nonspherical primary (described by J2). The nearly coplanar nature of the satellites, as well as an inferred density similar to water ice, strengthen the hypothesis that Haumea experienced a giant collision billions of years ago. The excited eccentricities and mutual inclination point to an intriguing tidal history of significant semimajor axis evolution through satellite mean-motion resonances. The orbital solution indicates that Namaka and Haumea are currently undergoing mutual events and that the mutual event season will last for next several years.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ed2d5335ff632f5280ba7d6fd48ce40afd7646e0

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. M. Brown
2. R. Gomes
3. R. Malhotra
4. A. Morbidelli
5. D. Nesvorný
6. C. Trujillo
7. Harold Levison
8. David C. Catling

Citations in the corpus

• The Compositions of Kuiper Belt Objects (2011, background): “In particular, the mutual orbital perturbations of the two Haumea satellites show that their masses are consistent with them having bulk densities even lower than 1 g cm−3 (Ragozzine & Brown 2009).”
• “TNOs are Cool”: A survey of the trans-Neptunian region (2017, unknown): “For a given shape model, knowledge of the object mass (Ragozzine & Brown 2009) provided the absolute values of a, b, and c, which in turn provided the object mean geometric albedo, based on its Hv magnitude.”