Surface Properties of TNOs: Preliminary Statistical Analysis

Details Surface Properties of TNOs: Preliminary Statistical Analysis Surface Properties of TNOs: Preliminary Statistical Analysis

Publishing date

Sep 2009

URL

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dps....41.6511a&link_type=abstract

Journals

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #41, #65.11

Science

Other

Type

Scientific paper

Abstract

An overview of the surface properties based on the last results obtained during the Large Program performed at ESO-VLT (2007-2008) will be presented.
Simultaneous high quality visible and near-infrared spectroscopy and photometry have been carried out on 40 objects with various dynamical properties, using FORS1 (V), ISAAC (J) and SINFONI (H+K bands) mounted respectively at UT2, UT1 and UT4 VLT-ESO telescopes (Cerro Paranal, Chile).
For spectroscopy we computed the spectral slope for each object and searched for possible rotational inhomogeneities. A few objects show features in their visible spectra such as Eris, whose spectral bands are displaced with respect to pure methane-ice. We identify new faint absorption features on 10199 Chariklo and 42355 Typhon, possibly due to the presence of aqueous altered materials. The H+K band spectroscopy was performed with the new instrument SINFONI which is a 3D integral field spectrometer. While some objects show no diagnostic spectral bands, others reveal surface deposits of ices of H2O, CH3OH, CH4, and N2.
To investigate the surface properties of these bodies, a radiative transfer model has been applied to interpret the entire 0.4-2.4 micron spectral region. The diversity of the spectra suggests that these objects represent a substantial range of bulk compositions. These different surface compositions can be diagnostic of original compositional diversity, interior source and/or different evolution with different physical processes affecting the surfaces.
A statistical analysis is in progress to investigate the correlation of the TNOs’ surface properties with size and dynamical properties.

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