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Charon's radius and density from the combined data sets of the 2005 July 11 occultation
STATUS REPORT
Date Released:
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Source: arXiv.org e-Print archive
Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0602082
From: Michael Person [view email]
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 17:35:45 GMT (651kb)
Charon's radius and density from the combined data sets of the 2005 July
11 occultation
Authors:
M. J. Person,
J. L. Elliot,
A. A. S. Gulbis,
J. M. Pasachoff,
B. A. Babcock,
S. P. Souza,
J. Gangestad
Comments: 25 pages including 4 tables and 2 figures. Submitted to the
Astronomical Journal on 2006 Feb 03
The 2005 July 11 C313.2 stellar occultation by Charon was observed by three
separate research groups, including our own, at observatories throughout South
America. Here, the published timings from the three data sets have been
combined to more accurately determine the mean radius of Charon: 606.0 +/- 1.5
km. Our analysis indicates that a slight oblateness in the body (0.006 +/-
0.003) best matches the data, with a confidence level of 86%. The oblateness
has a pole position angle of 71.4 deg +/- 10.4 deg and is consistent with
Charon's pole position angle of 67 deg. Charon's mean radius corresponds to a
bulk density of 1.63 +/- 0.07 g/cm3, which is significantly less than Pluto's
(1.92 +/- 0.12 g/cm3). This density differential favors an impact formation
scenario for the system in which at least one of the impactors was
differentiated. Finally, unexplained differences between chord timings measured
at Cerro Pachon and the rest of the data set could be indicative of a
depression as deep as 7 km on Charon's limb.
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