The B-V Colors and Photometric Variability of Nix and Hydra, Pluto's Two Small Satellites

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

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Scientific paper

Pluto's two small satellites, Nix and Hydra, were observed on four dates (15.1 and 18.1 May 2005, 15.7 February 2006, and 2.8 March 2006) using the Hubble Space Telescope's (HST) Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). V-band magnitudes were obtained for all dates, and B-band magnitudes were additionally measured on the last date. We find that both satellites have essentially neutral (grey) reflectivities, like Charon (IAUC 8686). We also find that neither satellite exhibited strong photometric variation; though our dataset is undersampled in time, this may suggest that P1 and P2 are relatively round and therefore toward the large end of their allowable size range.
Support for this work was provided by NASA through Grants GO-10427 and GO-10774 from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., and NASA's New Horizons Pluto-Kuiper Belt mission.

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