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6 HEBE REVISITED

6 HEBE REVISITED. PAUL MALEY JULY 16, 2011. From: “Dark Matter, Missing Planets & New Comets…”, T. Van Flandern. BACKGROUND. FIRST ASTEROID SATELLITE REPORT OCCURRED MARCH 5, 1977 AROUND 2H35M UT HST OBSERVATIONS OF HEBE HAVE NOT SHOWN EVIDENCE OF A SATELLITE

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6 HEBE REVISITED

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  1. 6 HEBE REVISITED PAUL MALEY JULY 16, 2011

  2. From: “Dark Matter, Missing Planets & New Comets…”, T. Van Flandern

  3. BACKGROUND • FIRST ASTEROID SATELLITE REPORT OCCURRED MARCH 5, 1977 AROUND 2H35M UT • HST OBSERVATIONS OF HEBE HAVE NOT SHOWN EVIDENCE OF A SATELLITE • DUNHAM ESTIMATES DISTANCE 900KM FROM PRIMARY

  4. HST SEARCH • CONDUCTED BY ALEX STORRS TWICE IN MARCH 2001: “Both times the asteroid was in one of the (lower resolution) wide field chips, but near to the planetary camera chip of WFPC2” from communication 7/14/11. • RANGE OF DETECTION COVERED THE HILL SPHERE

  5. HST WFPC2 RESOLUTION • A conservative estimate for detection in the wide-field chips would be about 19.5 magnitude, or about 1 km diameter. Something this size or larger we should see fairly easily. If its too close to the main body (conservatively again, within an arcsec) we might miss it in the scattered light. Might also miss something faint that’s right on the edge of the chips—our images were near the apex of the WFPC2 pyramid.

  6. “The observations of (6) Hebe in this program reveal no companions brighter than 7 mag fainter than the primary, or larger than 8km in diameter”

  7. MISSING DATA • IF SECONDARY OCCULTATION WAS REAL, WAS IT CAUSED BY ANOTHER PASSING ASTEROID? • 2nd SEARCH CARRIED OUT JULY 2011 BY DR. FAITH VILAS (PLANETARY SCIENCE INSTITUTE) • NEW SEARCH: UT 2:30 to 2:40, Hebe traveled 0.81 s in RA, and 5.5" in Dec. • SEARCH BOX DEFINED:   5 s in RA and 30" in Dec.

  8. RESULTS • 3092 COMETS ANALYZED IN JPL DATABASE • NO ASTEROIDS OTHER THAN HEBE IN SEARCH BOX • 554,557 asteroids in the JPL database, both numbered and unnumbered, were searched. • NO KNOWN OBJECTS FOUND

  9. CONCLUSION • IF A NATURAL SATELLITE EXISTS, IT DOES NOT CORRELATE WITH ANY KNOWN OBJECTS • HST DETECTION CAPABILITY WITH WFPC2 OPTICS MAY NOT HAVE PICKED IT UP

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