A Pluto-Charon Sonata: The Dynamical Architecture of the Circumbinary Satellite System

Scott J. Kenyon, Benjamin C. Bromley
(Submitted on 2 Oct 2018)

Using a large suite of n-body simulations, we explore the discovery space for new satellites in the Pluto-Charon system. For the adopted masses and orbits of the known satellites, there are few stable prograde or polar orbits with semimajor axes $a \lesssim 1.1~a_H$, where $a_H$ is the semimajor axis of the outermost moon Hydra. Small moons with radii $r \lesssim$ 2 km and $a \lesssim 1.1~a_H$ are ejected on time scales ranging from several yr to more than 10 Myr. Orbits with $a \gtrsim 1.1~a_H$ are stable on time scales exceeding 100 Myr. Near-IR and mid-IR imaging with JWST and ground-based occultation campaigns with 2-3-m class telescopes can detect 1-2 km satellites outside the orbit of Hydra. Searches for these moons enable new constraints on the masses of the known satellites and on theories for circumbinary satellite formation.

Comments:    34 pages of text, 2 tables, 12 figures, submitted to AAS journals, comments welcome. Animations associated with the paper are available at this https URL
Subjects:    Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as:    arXiv:1810.01277 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:1810.01277v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Scott J. Kenyon
[v1] Tue, 2 Oct 2018 14:19:04 GMT (830kb,D)
https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.01277