The Orbit of 617 Patroclus Binary Trojan System from Keck LGS AO observations
Résumé
We report the results from Laser Guide Star Adaptive Optics observations in 2004-2005 of 617 Patroclus using the NIRC2 camera at the W. M. Keck Observatory. An observing campaign which focuses on this only known binary Trojan asteroid, was initiated by our group. Both components of the system were detected at 5 different epochs between Nov. 2004 and May 2005 with an angular separation between 45 and 190 mas and a Dm ˜0.17. The orbital parameters were estimated independently using two algorithms, a Monte-Carlo technique (Hestroffer and Vachier, IAU-ACM, 2005), and a visual binary method (Descamps, Cel. Mech., 2005): a= 685±40 km, e = 0.02±0.02, P = 4.287±0.002 or P= 2.391±0.003 corresponding to a total mass of 1.4 x 1018 or 4.3 x 1018 ± 0.2 kg. Considering recent radiometric measurements by Fernandez et al., (AJ, 126, 2003), the radii of components would be R1= 60.9 km and R2=56.3 km (error ˜1.6 km and with eta =0.94), leading to an averaged bulk density of 0.8 or 2.6 ±0.1 g/cm3. The factor of ˜2 uncertainty in the period will be removed using additional observations from CADC archive (in progress).