Opposition Surges in Three Colors for 25 KBOs and Centaurs

Details Opposition Surges in Three Colors for 25 KBOs and Centaurs Opposition Surges in Three Colors for 25 KBOs and Centaurs

Oct 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007dps....39.3905s&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #39, #39.05; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.491

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

We have used the SMARTS 1.3m telescope to get BVI light curves of 18 KBOs and 7 Centaurs spread over a wide range of solar phase angles. This large data base (3282 magnitudes) is unique in its phase coverage, and gives accurate measures of opposition surges for many of small icy bodies in the outer Solar System. (1) We deduce the dominant cause of surges for each body. The cause of the surge is coherent-backscattering if the surge is color dependent (as shadow hiding is color independent), if the albedo is > 20% (so that shadows get filled in), or if the angular scale for the fitted Hapke function is ɛ degrees (as such long shadows require an unreasonable geometry). The cause of the surge is likely shadow-hiding if the fitted angular scale for the Hapke function is >6 degrees, the surge amplitude is color-independent, and the albedo is < 10%. With this, we can classify almost all our sample as being dominated by either shadow-hiding or coherent-backscattering. (2) We find that all Centaurs are dominated by shadow-hiding, while most KBOs are dominated by coherent-backscattering. (3) We find that objects of all types with orbital inclination <15 degrees have moderately steep surges with >0.11 mag/deg, while higher inclination objects have a wide range of surge slopes from 0.00-0.27 mag/deg. (4) We find that objects in the red mode with B-I>2.0 mag are all dominated by coherent-backscattering. (5) We find that B-I color is bimodally distributed in our sample, for no objects with 1.8This work is supported by NASA under grants NAG5-13533 and NAG5-13369.

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