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Medium-sized satellites of large Kuiper belt objects

2 Pith papers cite this work, alongside 37 external citations. Polarity classification is still indexing.

2 Pith papers citing it
37 external citations · Pith
abstract

While satellites of mid- to small-Kuiper belt objects tend to be similar in size and brightness to their primaries, the largest Kuiper belt objects preferentially have satellites with small fractional brightness. In the two cases where the sizes and albedos of the small faint satellites have been measured, these satellites are seen to be small icy fragments consistent with collisional formation. Here we examine Dysnomia and Vanth, the satellites of Eris and Orcus, respectively. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, we obtain the first spatially resolved observations of these systems at thermal wavelengths. We find a diameter for Dysnomia of 700+/-115 km and for Vanth of 475+/-75 km, with albedos of 0.04_+0.02_-0.01 and 0.08+/-0.02 respectively. Both Dysnomia and Vanth are indistinguishable from typical Kuiper belt objects of their size. Potential implications for the formation of these types of satellites are discussed.

fields

astro-ph.EP 2

years

2026 1 2019 1

verdicts

UNVERDICTED 2

representative citing papers

Shape, Orientation and Colors Combined approach for Asteroids (SOCCA)

astro-ph.EP · 2026-06-16 · unverdicted · novelty 6.0

SOCCA extends HG1G2 by modeling the projected surface of a rotating triaxial ellipsoid to jointly retrieve absolute magnitude, phase parameters, spin state, and shape from sparse multi-band photometry, halving residuals and tripling precision on LSST simulations and Eugenia data.

citing papers explorer

Showing 2 of 2 citing papers.

  • Shape, Orientation and Colors Combined approach for Asteroids (SOCCA) astro-ph.EP · 2026-06-16 · unverdicted · none · ref 91 · internal anchor

    SOCCA extends HG1G2 by modeling the projected surface of a rotating triaxial ellipsoid to jointly retrieve absolute magnitude, phase parameters, spin state, and shape from sparse multi-band photometry, halving residuals and tripling precision on LSST simulations and Eugenia data.

  • Early formation of moons around large trans-Neptunian objects via giant impacts astro-ph.EP · 2019-06-26 · unverdicted · none · ref 5 · internal anchor

    Giant impact simulations produce satellite mass ratios matching TNO observations, with spin/orbital periods explained only by tidal evolution from fluid to rigid states.