Light curves of the trans-Neptunian objects 1996 TP66 and 1994 VK8

We have obtained a number of CCD images of two trans-Neptunian objects, 1994 VK8 and 1996 TP66, over two nights. The changes in magnitude of these objects have been examined, in a search for periodic variation. In the case of 1996 TP66, nothing other than random noise can be found to within the errors of ∼0.04 mag. Although a periodic signal is found for 1994 VK8, it appears to be an artefact, as the same frequency appears in the variation of sky brightness and is probably due to the sampling of the data. However, 1994 VK8 does exhibit a variation of ∼0.5 mag. This would suggest either significant non-sphericity or a change in surface composition over a large area. In either case 1994 VK8 warrants further investigation.     

The Kuiper Belt luminosity function from mR= 22 to 25

In summer 1999, we performed a survey optimized for the discovery of irregular satellites of Uranus and Neptune. We imaged 11.85 deg² of sky and discovered 66 new outer Solar system objects (not counting the three new Uranian satellites). Given the very short orbital arcs of our observations, only the heliocentric distance can be reliably determined. We were able to model the radial distribution of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). Our data support the idea of a strong depletion in the surface density beyond 45 au.
After fully characterizing this survey's detection efficiency as a function of object magnitude and rate of motion, we find that the apparent luminosity function of the trans-Neptunian region in the range   m_R = 22–25  is steep with a best-fitting cumulative power-law index of  α≃ 0.76  with one object per deg² estimated at magnitude   R _o= 23.3  . This steep slope, corresponding to a differential size index of   q ≃ 4.8  , agrees with other older and more recent analyses for the luminosity function brighter than 25 mag. A double power-law fit to the new data set turns out to be statistically unwarrented; this large and homogeneous data set provides no evidence for a break in the power-law slope, which must eventually occur if the Bernstein et al. sky density measurements are correct.     

Confined chaotic motion in three-body resonances: trapping of trans-Neptunian material induced by gas-drag

Jiang & Yeh proposed gas-drag-induced resonant capture as a mechanism able to explain the dominant 3:2 resonance observed in the trans-Neptunian belt. Using a model of a disc–star–planet system they concluded that gaseous drag in a protoplanetary disc can trap trans-Neptunian object (TNO) embryos into the 3:2 resonance rather easily although it could not trap objects into the 2:1 resonance. Here we further investigate this scenario using numerical simulations within the context of the planar restricted four-body problem by including both present-day Uranus and Neptune. Our results show that mean motion and corotation resonances are possible and trapping into both the 3:2 and 2:1 resonances as well as other resonances is observed. The associated corotation centres may easily form larger planetesimals from smaller ones. Corotation resonances evolve into pure Lindblad resonances in a time-scale of 0.5 Myr. The non-linear corotation and mean motion resonances produced are very size selective. The 3:2 resonance is dominant for submetric particles but for larger particles the 2:1 resonance is stronger. In summary, our calculations show that confined chaotic motion around the resonances not only increases trapping efficiency but also the orbital eccentricities of the trapped material, modifying the relative abundance of trapped particles in different resonances. If we assume a more compact planetary system, instead of using the present-day values of the orbital elements of Uranus and Neptune, our results remain largely unchanged.     

The absolute magnitude distribution of trans-Neptunian objects

It is shown that the known trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) have an absolute magnitude distribution index that increases as a function of orbital perihelion distance. In no perihelion range is the TNO index the same as that found for known short-period comets. However, the fact that the median diameters of the known members of these two populations (220 and 2.9 km respectively) differ by a factor of about 75 means that very small TNOs and short-period comets might still be related.     

Can GJ 876 host four planets in resonance?

Prior to the detection of its outermost Uranus-mass object, it had been suggested that GJ 876 could host an Earth-sized planet in a 15-day orbit. Observation, however, did not support this idea, but instead revealed evidence for the existence of a larger body in a ~125-day orbit, near a three-body resonance with the two giant planets of this system. In this paper, we present a detailed analysis of the dynamics of the four-planet system of GJ 876, and examine the possibility of the existence of other planetary objects interior to its outermost body. We have developed a numerical scheme that enables us to search the orbital parameter-space very effectively and, in a short time, identify regions where an object may be stable. We present details of this integration method and discuss its application to the GJ 876 four-planet system. The results of our initial analysis suggested possible stable orbits at regions exterior to the orbit of the outermost planet and also indicated that an island of stability may exist in and around the 15-day orbit. However, examining the long-term stability of an object in that region by direct integration revealed that the 15-day orbit becomes unstable and that the system of GJ 876 is most likely dynamically full. We present the results of our study and discuss their implications for the formation and final orbital architecture of this system.     

Study on the Orbit Prediction Errors of Space Objects Based on Historical TLE Data

Two line element (TLE) released by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) is widely used by aerospace workers, and the matched SGP4/SDP4 (Simplified General Perturbation Version 4/Simplified Deep-space Perturbation Version 4) model is used to propagate it. Nevertheless, no corresponding information about its accuracy and covariance is clearly given, thus the application of the TLE data is greatly restricted. In this paper, the determined and predicted orbits are compared to generate the orbit error data, based on the historical TLE data obtained from the Space-Track website and the SGP4/SDP4 model. By dividing different time bins, the fitting coefficients of the variation of orbit prediction error with time are given for each space object, and the characteristics of the error evolution are further discussed for the different types of orbits. The mean analytic model of the orbit prediction error evolution with time is given respectively for the four orbit types of space objects, which provides a valuable reference for extending the application of the TLE data.     

Asteroids on Earth-like orbits and their origin

The orbit of 1991 VG and a set of other asteroids whose orbits are very similar to that of the Earth have been examined. Its origin has been speculated to be a returning spacecraft, lunar ejecta or a low-inclination Amor- or Apollo-class object. The latter is arguably the more likely source, which has been investigated here. The impact probability for these objects has been calculated, and while it is larger than that of a typical near-Earth asteroid (NEA), it is still less than 1:200 000 over the next 5000 yr. In addition, the probability of an NEA ever ending up on an Earth-like orbit has been obtained from numerical simulations and turned out to be about 1:20 000, making this a rare class of objects. The typical time spent in this state is about 10 000 yr, much less than the typical NEA lifetime of 10 Myr.     

Formation of trans-Neptunian satellite systems at the stage of condensations

The formation of trans-Neptunian satellite systems at the stage of rarefied preplanetesimals (i.e., condensations of dust and/or objects less than 1 m in diameter) is discussed. It is assumed that trans-Neptunian objects (including those with satellites) could form as a result of compression of parental rarefied preplanetesimals. The formulas for calculating the angular momentum of two colliding condensations with respect to their center of mass, which were applied earlier in (Ipatov, 2010) in the comparison of such momenta with the angular momenta of observed satellite systems, are used to estimate the angular momenta of condensations needed to form satellite systems. It is demonstrated that the angular velocities of condensations used in (Nesvorny et al., 2010) as the initial data in the computer simulation of compression of rarefied preplanetesimals and subsequent formation of trans-Neptunian satellite systems may be obtained in collisions of preplanetesimals with their radii comparable to the corresponding Hill radii. For example, these angular velocities are in the range of possible values of angular velocities of a parental rarefied preplanetesimal formed as a result of a merger of two colliding rarefied preplanetesimals that moved in circular heliocentric orbits before a collision. Some rarefied preplanetesimals formed as a result of collision of preplanetesimals in the region of formation of solid small bodies acquire such angular momenta that are sufficient to form satellite systems of small bodies. It is likely that the ratio of the number of rarefied preplanetesimals with such angular momenta to the total number of rarefied preplanetesimals producing classical trans-Neptunian objects with diameters larger than 100 km was 0.45 (the initial fraction of satellite systems among all classical trans-Neptunian objects).     

A ROSAT observation of the eclipsing binary system XY UMa

The short-period, eclipsing, magnetically active binary system XY UMa has been observed over several orbital cycles at X-ray wavelengths. The X-ray light curves vary owing to obvious flares and other lower level activity on time-scales of days. These data caution against deducing coronal structure on the basis of a single orbit of X-ray data. In contrast to similar binary systems, XY UMa shows no significant X-ray eclipses. This is interpreted as evidence for either extended (> 1  R _⊙) coronae or a compact corona at high, uneclipsed latitudes on the primary star. The extended coronal scenario is favoured by some observational features of other systems such as extended radio coronae, long-duration X-ray flares and cool prominences, but unfavoured by others such as high coronal densities from EUV spectroscopy. A high-latitude compact corona might be associated with the high-latitude starspots seen in many active stars. Nearly simultaneous optical light curves suggest that some equatorial spots were present at the time of the X-ray observations, but fewer than in previous or subsequent years and that high-latitude spots must also be present. It is speculated that the lack of X-ray eclipses and dearth of equatorial, compact coronal regions are associated with a minimum in XY UMa's magnetic activity cycle.     

Discovery of an asteroid and quasi‐satellite in an Earth‐like horseshoe orbit

Abstract— The newly discovered asteroid 2002 AA₂₉ moves in a very Earth‐like orbit that relative to Earth has a unique horseshoe shape and allows transitions to a quasi‐satellite state. This is the first body known to be in a simple heliocentric horseshoe orbit, moving along its parent planet's orbit. It is similarly also the first true co‐orbital object of Earth, since other asteroids in 1:1 resonance with Earth have orbits very dissimilar from that of our planet. When a quasi‐satellite, it remains within 0.2 AU of the Earth for several decades. 2002 AA₂₉ is the first asteroid known to exhibit this behavior. 2002 AA₂₉ introduces an important new class of objects offering potential targets for space missions and clues to asteroid orbit transfer evolution.     

Speckle observations with PISCO in Merate – II. Astrometric measurements of visual binaries in 2004

We present relative astrometric measurements of visual binaries taken during the second semester of 2004 with the Pupil Interferometry Speckle camera and Coronagraph (PISCO) at the 1-m Zeiss telescope of the Brera Astronomical Observatory, in Merate, Italy. We performed 207 new observations of 194 objects with angular separations in the range 0.1–4.0 arcsec and an accuracy better than ∼0.01 arcsec. Our sample contains orbital couples as well as binaries whose motion is still uncertain. Our purpose is to improve the accuracy of the orbits and constrain the masses of the components.
Those measurements show that the orbit of ADS 15115 needs to be revised; we propose a new orbit for this object.     

Migration of Trans-Neptunian Objects to the Terrestrial Planets

The orbital evolution of more than 22000 Jupiter-crossing objects under thegravitational influence of planets was investigated. We found that the meancollision probabilities of Jupiter-crossing objects (from initial orbits close tothe orbit of a comet) with the terrestrial planets can differ by more than twoorders of magnitude for different comets. For initial orbital elements close tothose of some comets (e.g., 2P and 10P), about 0.1% of objects got Earth-crossingorbits with semi-major axes a < 2 AU and moved in such orbits for more than a Myr (up to tens or even hundreds of Myrs).Results of our runs testify in favor of at least one of these conclusions: (1) the portionof 1-km former trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) among near-Earth objects (NEOs)can exceed several tens of percent, (2) the number of TNOs migrating inside the solarsystem could be smaller by a factor of several than it was earlier considered, (3) mostof 1-km former TNOs that had got NEO orbits disintegrated into mini-comets and dustduring a smaller part of their dynamical lifetimes if these lifetimes are not small.     

Red companions to a z=2.15 radio-loud quasar

We have conducted observations of the environment around the z =2.15 radio-loud quasar 1550–269 in search of distant galaxies associated either with it or the z =2.09 C  iv absorber along its line of sight. Such objects will be distinguished by their red colours, R − K >4.5. We find five such objects in a 1.5 arcmin² field around the quasar, with typical K ' magnitudes of ∼20.4 and no detected R -band emission. We also find a sixth object with K =19.6±0.3, and undetected at R , just two arcsec from the quasar. The nature of all these objects is currently unclear, and will remain so until we have determined their redshifts. We suggest that it is likely that they are associated with either the quasar or the C  iv absorber, in which case their properties might be similar to those of the z =2.38 red Ly α emitting galaxies discovered by Francis et al. The small separation between the quasar and the brightest of our objects suggests that it may be the galaxy responsible for the C  iv metal line absorption system. The closeness to the quasar and the red colour might have precluded similar objects from being uncovered in previous searches for emission from C  iv and damped absorbers.     

A search for luminous Be stars

As Be stars are restricted to luminosity classes III‐V, but early B‐type stars are believed to evolve into supergiants, it is to be expected that the Be phenomenon disappears at some point in the evolution of a moderately massive star, before it reaches the supergiant phase. As a first stage in an attempt to determine the physical reasons of this cessation, a search of the literature has provided a number of candidates to be Be stars with luminosity classes Ib or II. Spectroscopy has been obtained for candidates in a number of open clusters and associations, as well as several other bright stars in those clusters. Among the objects observed, HD 207329 is the best candidate to be a high‐luminosity Be star, as it appears like a fast‐rotating supergiant with double‐peaked emission lines. The lines of HD 229059, in Berkeley 87, also appear morphologically similar to those of Be stars, but there are reasons to suspect that this object is an interacting binary. At slightly lower luminosities, LS I +56°92 (B4 II) and HD 333452 (O9 II), also appear as intrinsically luminous Be stars. Two Be stars in NGC 6913, HD 229221 and HD 229239, appear to have rather higher intrinsic magnitudes than their spectral type (B0.2 III in both cases) would indicate, being as luminous as luminosity class II objects in the same cluster. HD 344863, in NGC 6823, is also a rather early Be star of moderately high luminosity. The search shows that, though high‐luminosity Be stars do exist, they are scarce and, perhaps surprisingly, tend to have early spectral types. (© 2004 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Venus-intercepting meteoroid streams

This study is motivated by the possibility of determining the large-body meteoroid flux at the orbit of Venus. Towards this end, we attempt to estimate the times at which enhanced meteoric activity might be observed in the planet's atmosphere. While a number of meteoroid streams are identified as satisfying common Earth and Venus intercept conditions, it is not clear from the Earth-observed data if these streams contain large-body meteoroids. A subset of the Taurid Complex objects may produce fireball-rich meteor showers on Venus. A total of 11 short-period, periodic comets and 46 near-Earth asteroids approach the orbit of Venus to within 0.1 au, and these objects may have associated meteoroid streams. Comets 27P/Crommelin and 7P/Pons–Winnecke are identified as candidate parents to possible periodic meteor showers at the orbit of Venus.     

On the efficiency of the Ultra Steep Spectrum technique in finding high-z radiogalaxies

In the last three decades, the Ultra Steep Spectrum technique has been exploited by many groups since it was demonstrated that radio sources with very steep spectra (<−1.0; S ∝ ν) are good tracers of high-z radio galaxies (HzRGs; z>2). Though more than 150 HzRGs have been discovered up to now with this technique, little is known about its real effectiveness, as most of the ongoing searches still have incomplete follow-up programs. By selecting a new appropriate sample of USS sources from the MRC survey, the true searching efficiency of the USS technique has been quantitatively demonstrated for the first time in this paper. Moreover, it was compared with that of an optical search of HzRGs based on a simple cut of the galaxies r-band magnitude distribution. When no bias other than the radio-spectrum steepness is applied, the USS technique may be up to four times more efficient in selecting HzRGs with respect to an optical search. Nevertheless, when the search is limited to objects fainter than the POSS-II plates (r21), the USS technique is still 2.5 times more efficient (ε_USS=0.52 vs. ε_OPT=0.19). For an optical search to reach a comparable efficiency it is necessary to select objects fainter than r=23, but this implies that about half of the HzRGs are lost because of the imposed magnitude bias. The advantage of the USS technique is that a 0.5 search efficiency is already reached at the POSS-II plates limit, where all the optical identification work is done without telescopes. However, this technique has the drawback that up to 40% of the HzRGs of the sample are lost simply because of the applied spectral index bias. Interestingly, the introduction of a strong angular-size bias such as θ<15″ can double the searching efficiency irrespectively of the adopted technique, but only in the case that no optical bias has been introduced first.     

Search for orbital motion of the pulsar 4U 1626–67: Candidate for a neutron star with a supernova fall-back accretion disk

We report here results from a new search for orbital motion of the accretion powered X-ray pulsar 4U 1626–67 using two different analysis techniques. X-ray light curve obtained with the Proportional Counter Array of the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer during a long observation carried out in February 1996, was used in this work. The spin period and the local period derivative were first determined from the broad 2–60 keV energy band light curve and these were used for all subsequent timing analysis. In the first technique, the orbital phase dependent pulse arrival times were determined for different trial orbital periods in the range of 500 to 10,000 s. We have determined a 3σ upper limit of 13 lt-ms on the projected semimajor axis of the orbit of the neutron star for most of the orbital period range, while in some narrow orbital period ranges, covering about 10% of the total orbital period range, it is 20lt-ms. In the second method, we have measured the pulse arrival times at intervals of 100 s over the entire duration of the observation. The pulse arrival time data were used to put an upper limit on any periodic arrival time delay using the Lomb-Scargle periodogram. We have obtained a similar upper limit of 10 lt-ms using the second method over the orbital period range of 500–10,000 s. This puts very stringent upper limits for the mass of the compact object except for the unlikely case of a complete face-on orientation of the binary system with respect to our line-of-sight. In the light of this measurement and the earlier reports, we discuss the possibility of this system being a neutron star with a supernovae fall-back accretion disk.     

Capturing near earth objects

Recendy,Near Earth Objects (NEOs) have been attracting great attention,and thousands of NEOs have been found to date.This paper examines the NEOs'orbital dynamics using the framework of an accurate solar system model and a SunEarth-NEO three-body system when the NEOs are close to Earth to search for NEOs with low-energy orbits.It is possible for such an NEO to be temporarily captured by Earth; its orbit would thereby be changed and it would become an Earth-orbiting object after a small increase in its velocity.From the point of view of the Sun-Earth-NEO restricted three-body system,it is possible for an NEO whose Jacobian constant is slightly lower than C1 but higher than C3 to be temporarily captured by Earth.When such an NEO approaches Earth,it is possible to change its orbital energy to nearly the zero velocity surface of the three-body system at point L1 and make the NEO become a small satellite of the Earth.Some such NEOs were found; the best example only required a 410 m s-1 increase in velocity.     

Tracing the star stream through M31 using planetary nebula kinematics

We present a possible orbit for the Southern Stream of stars in M31, which connects it to the Northern Spur. Support for this model comes from the dynamics of planetary nebulae (PNe) in the disc of M31: analysis of a new sample of 2611 PNe obtained using the Planetary Nebula Spectrograph reveals ∼20 objects with kinematics inconsistent with the normal components of the galaxy, but which lie at the right positions and velocities to connect the two photometric features via this orbit. The satellite galaxy M32 is coincident with the stream both in position and velocity, adding weight to the hypothesis that the stream comprises its tidal debris.     

1984 AB—A unique Mars-crossing asteroid

Asteroid 1984 AB, discovered in January 1984, proved to be a unique object with a close dynamical relationship to Mars. A brief history of the discovery and subsequent “evolution” of the orbit as it was refined is presented. The preliminary orbit of 1984 AB indicated that it might be a Mars Trojan, and an extended discussion of this interesting possibility is presented, but this hypothesis had to be dismissed after further observations had refined the orbit. The semimajor axis and orbital eccentricity are very similar to that of Mars. No other known Mars-crossing asteroid exists with an orbit as closely associated to Mars.