Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
May 2008
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008dda....39.0401g&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DDA meeting #39, #4.01
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
A significant fraction of known trans-neptunian objects (TNOs) are known to inhabit mean-motion resonances with Neptune. (Pluto, in the 3:2 resonance, is the best known example). Recent work has shown that many other resonances are also populated (most especially the 6:5, 4:3, 7:4, 2:1, and 5:2). The resonance dynamics cause TNOs librating in the resonance to be distributed non-uniformly on the sky in the sense that the heliocentric distance becomes strongly correlated with the separation in longitude relative to Neptune. This has a strong dependence on the detectibility of resonant TNOs in observational surveys.
An important piece of the dynamics is the study of how the libration amplitude of the resonant argument enters into the observability question, since the distribution of these resonant amplitudes can be a diagnostic of how the resonance may have been populated due to planetary migration allowing the capture of non-resonant objects into the resonances early in Solar System history. The libration amplitude distribution couples with the size and eccentricity distributions to determine the sensitivity of detection when a TNO search is conducted in a certain sky direction. I will show how these considerations can be used with calibrated TNO surveys to constrain the orbital element and size distributions of resonant objects in the Kuiper Belt. This goal is considerably complicated by the fact that many high-inclination resonant TNOs also co-inhabit the Kozai resonance. Such objects have a further strong effect introduced into their detectibility.
This work is supported by NSERC, CFI, NASA-Planetary Astronomy, and the Canada Research Chairs program.
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