Mean radius and shape of Pluto and Charon from New Horizons images

Francis Nimmo, Orkan M Umurhan, Casey M Lisse, Carver J Bierson, Tod R Lauer, Marc W Buie, Henry B Throop, Josh A Kammer, James H Roberts, William B McKinnon, Jeffrey M Moore, S Alan Stern, Leslie A Young, Harold A Weaver, Cathy B Olkin, Kim Ennico, the New Horizons GGI team
(Submitted on 2 Mar 2016)

Approach images of Pluto and Charon taken by the LORRI imaging system during the New Horizons spacecraft encounter have been used to determine the mean radii and shape of Pluto and Charon. The primary observations are limb locations derived using three independent approaches. The resulting mean radii of Pluto and Charon are 1187.6 +/- 1.8 km and 605.4 +/- 1.2 km, respectively (2-sigma). The corresponding densities are 1857 +/- 6 kg m-3 and 1707 +/- 17 kg m-3 (1-sigma). The Charon radius value is consistent with previous Earth-based occultation estimates. Neither Pluto nor Charon show any evidence for tidal/rotational distortions; upper bounds on the oblateness are <0.6% and <0.5%, respectively.

Comments: preprint submitted to Icarus
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:1603.00821 [astro-ph.EP]
(or arXiv:1603.00821v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Francis Nimmo
[v1] Wed, 2 Mar 2016 18:41:41 GMT (2509kb)
http://arxiv.org/abs/1603.00821