What do the orbital motions of the outer planets of the Solar System tell us about the Pioneer anomaly? |
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Authors: | Lorenzo Iorio Giuseppe Giudice |
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Institution: | aViale Unità di Italia 68, 70125 Bari, Italy bDipartimento di Progettazione e Gestione Industriale, Piazzale Tecchio 80, 80125 Napoli, Italy |
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Abstract: | In this paper, we investigate the effects that an anomalous acceleration as that experienced by the Pioneer spacecraft after they passed the 20 AU threshold would induce on the orbital motions of the Solar System planets placed at heliocentric distances of 20 AU or larger as Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. It turns out that such an acceleration, with a magnitude of 8.74 × 10?10 m s?2, would affect their orbits with secular and short-period signals large enough to be detected according to the latest published results by E.V. Pitjeva, even by considering errors up to 30 times larger than those released. The absence of such anomalous signatures in the latest data rules out the possibility that in the region 20–40 AU of the Solar System an anomalous force field inducing a constant and radial acceleration with those characteristics affects the motion of the major planets. |
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Keywords: | Pioneer anomaly Celestial mechanics Ephemerides Outer planets of the Solar System |
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