OSSOS. XII. Subaru/HSC obs. of 65 TNOs

DOI

We present variability measurements and partial light curves of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) from a two-night pilot study using Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) on the Subaru Telescope (Maunakea, Hawaii, USA). Subaru's large aperture (8m) and HSC's large field of view (1.77deg^2^) allow us to obtain measurements of multiple objects with a range of magnitudes in each telescope pointing. We observed 65 objects with m_r_=22.6-25.5mag in just six pointings, allowing 20-24 visits of each pointing over the two nights. Our sample, all discovered in the recent Outer Solar System Origins Survey (OSSOS), spans absolute magnitudes of H_r_=6.2-10.8mag and thus investigates smaller objects than previous light curve projects have typically studied. Our data supports the existence of a correlation between the light curve amplitude and absolute magnitude seen in other works but does not support a correlation between the amplitude and orbital inclination. Our sample includes a number of objects from different dynamical populations within the trans-Neptunian region, but we do not find any relationship between variability and the dynamical class. We were only able to estimate periods for 12 objects in the sample and found that a longer baseline of observations is required for a reliable period analysis. We find that 31 objects (just under half of our sample) have variability of {Delta}mag greater than 0.4mag during all of the observations; in smaller 1.25hr, 1.85hr, and 2.45hr windows, the median {Delta}mag is 0.13, 0.16, and 0.19mag, respectively. The fact that variability on this scale is common for small TNOs has important implications for discovery surveys (such as OSSOS or the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope) and color measurements.

Identifier
DOI http://doi.org/10.26093/cds/vizier.22440019
Source https://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/lp/custom/CDS.VizieR/J/ApJS/244/19
Related Identifier https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJS/244/19
Related Identifier http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJS/244/19
Metadata Access http://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/pmh/pubreg.xml?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_b2find&identifier=ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJS/244/19
Provenance
Creator Alexandersen M.; Benecchi S.D.; Chen Y.-T.; Eduardo M.R.; Thirouin A.,Schwamb M.E.; Lehner M.J.; Wang S.-Y.; Bannister M.T.; Gladman B.J.,Gwyn S.D.J.; Kavelaars JJ.; Petit J.-M.; Volk K.
Publisher CDS
Publication Year 2020
Rights https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.html
OpenAccess true
Contact CDS support team <cds-question(at)unistra.fr>
Representation
Resource Type Dataset; AstroObjects
Discipline Astrophysics and Astronomy; Natural Sciences; Observational Astronomy; Physics; Solar System Astronomy