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The orbit, mass, and albedo of transneptunian binary (66652) 1999 RZ253 |
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| Authors: | Keith S Noll Denise C Stephens Ian Griffin |
| Institution: | a Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA b Lowell Observatory, 1400 W. Mars Hill Rd., Flagstaff, AZ 86001, USA c Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester, UK |
| Abstract: | We have observed (66652) 1999 RZ253 with the Hubble Space Telescope at seven separate epochs and have fit an orbit to the observed relative positions of this binary. Two orbital solutions have been identified that differ primarily in the inclination of the orbit plane. The best fit corresponds to an orbital period,  days, semimajor axis a=4660±170 km and orbital eccentricity e=0.460±0.013 corresponding to a system mass m=3.7±0.4×1018 kg. For a density of  the albedo at 477 nm is p477=0.12±0.01, significantly higher than has been commonly assumed for objects in the Kuiper belt. Multicolor, multiepoch photometry shows this pair to have colors typical for the Kuiper belt with a spectral gradient of 0.35 per 100 nm in the range between 475 and 775 nm. Photometric variations at the four epochs we observed were as large as 12±3% but the sampling is insufficient to confirm the existence of a lightcurve. |
| Keywords: | Kuiper belt objects Orbits |
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