We present the discovery of a long-term stable L5 (trailing) Neptune Trojan in data acquired to search for candidate Trans-Neptunian objects for the New Horizons spacecraft to fly by during an extended post-Pluto mission. This Neptune Trojan, 2011 HM
102, has the highest inclination (29.4 degrees) of any known member of this population. It is intrinsically brighter than any single L5 Jupiter Trojan at H~8.18. We have determined its gri colors (a first for any L5 Neptune Trojan), which we find to be similar to the moderately red colors of the L4 Neptune Trojans, suggesting similar surface properties for members of both Trojan clouds. We also present colors derived from archival data for two L4 Neptune Trojans (2006 RJ103 and 2007 VL305), better refining the overall color distribution of the population. In this document we describe the discovery circumstances, our physical characterization of 2011 HM102, and this objects implications for the Neptune Trojan population overall. Finally, we discuss the prospects for detecting 2011 HM102 from the New Horizons spacecraft during their close approach in mid- to late-2013.
The low-inclination component of the Classical Kuiper Belt is host to a population of extremely widely-separated binaries. These systems are similar to other Trans-Neptunian binaries (TNBs) in that the primary and secondary components of each system
are of roughly equal size. We have performed an astrometric monitoring campaign of a sample of seven wide-separation, long-period TNBs and present the first-ever well-characterized mutual orbits for each system. The sample contains the most eccentric (2006 CH69, e=0.9) and the most widely-separated, weakly bound (2001 QW322, a/Rh~0.22) binary minor planets known, and also contains the system with lowest-measured mass of any TNB (2000 CF105, M~1.85E17 kg). Four systems orbit in a prograde sense, and three in a retrograde sense. They have a different mutual inclination distribution compared to all other TNBs, preferring low mutual-inclination orbits. These systems have geometric r-band albedos in the range of 0.09-0.3, consistent with radiometric albedo estimates for larger solitary low-inclination Classical Kuiper Belt objects, and we limit the plausible distribution of albedos in this region of the Kuiper Belt. We find that gravitational collapse binary formation models produce a similar orbital distribution to that currently observed, which along with a confluence of other factors supports formation of the cold Classical Kuiper Belt in situ through relatively rapid gravitational collapse rather than slow hierarchical accretion. We show that these binary systems are sensitive to disruption via collisions, and their existence suggests that the size distribution of TNOs at small sizes remains relatively shallow.
Two populations of minor bodies in the outer Solar System remain particularly elusive: Scattered Disk objects and Sedna-like objects. These populations are important dynamical tracers, and understanding the details of their spatial- and size-distribu
tions will enhance our understanding of the formation and on-going evolution of the Solar System. By using newly-derived limits on the maximum heliocentric distances that recent pencil-beam surveys for Trans-Neptunian Objects were sensitive to, we determine new upper limits on the total numbers of distant SDOs and Sedna-like objects. While generally consistent with populations estimated from wide-area surveys, we show that for magnitude-distribution slopes of {alpha} > 0.7-1.0, these pencil-beam surveys provide stronger upper limits than current estimates in literature.
Digital co-addition of astronomical images is a common technique for increasing signal-to-noise and image depth. A modification of this simple technique has been applied to the detection of minor bodies in the Solar System: first stationary objects a
re removed through the subtraction of a high-SN template image, then the sky motion of the Solar System bodies of interest is predicted and compensated for by shifting pixels in software prior to the co-addition step. This shift-and-stack approach has been applied with great success in directed surveys for minor Solar System bodies. In these surveys, the shifts have been parameterized in a variety of ways. However, these parameterizations have not been optimized and in most cases cannot be effectively applied to data sets with long observation arcs due to objects real trajectories diverging from linear tracks on the sky. This paper presents two novel probabilistic approaches for determining a near-optimum set of shift-vectors to apply to any image set given a desired region of orbital space to search. The first method is designed for short observational arcs, and the second for observational arcs long enough to require non-linear shift-vectors. Using these techniques and other optimizations, we derive optimized grids for previous surveys that have used shift-and-stack approaches to illustrate the improvements that can be made with our method, and at the same time derive new limits on the range of orbital parameters these surveys searched. We conclude with a simulation of a future applications for this approach with LSST, and show that combining multiple nights of data from such next-generation facilities is within the realm of computational feasibility.
