A Wider Search for Small Distant Moons of Neptune

Details A Wider Search for Small Distant Moons of Neptune A Wider Search for Small Distant Moons of Neptune

Feb 2003

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2003noao.prop..405h&link_type=abstract

NOAO Proposal ID #2003A-0405

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Scientific paper

In 1999, we conducted a wide-field search for neptunian satellites, covering about 8 square degrees. That survey yielded no new satellites to magnitude R~ 24. We interpreted this as supporting a violent destruction of the Neptunian outer satellite system as Triton was captured and tidally circularized (McKinnon 1984, Goldreich et al. 1989). However, recent discoveries of small jovian and saturnian irregular satellites, suggested that the largest undiscovered Neptune satellites lay just beyond the survey's magnitude limit. In August 2001 and 2002, we used the CTIO 4-m/Mosaic camera to search to m_R~eq25.5, to test this hypothesis. We discovered a total of six neptunian satellites candidates. Orbit estimates suggest that they all have semimajor axes and inclinations significantly larger than those of Nereid. Two competing theories for Triton's capture from heliocentric orbit and subsequent tidal evolution have been developed. In one the energy dissipation required for capture resulted from Triton's collision with a pre-existing regular satellite (Goldreich et al. 1989). In the other this energy was dissipated through Triton's repeated passage through a gas disk (McKinnon 1984, McKinnon & Leith 1995). The time scales for these two processes differ by orders of magnitude. Thus, the signatures of Triton's perturbations on other neptunian irregulars would be quite different. With a wider, more complete survey for neptunian irregular satellites we can distinguish between these theories.

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