Estimates of the physical parameters of remote planetary satellites

ISSN： 0038-0946

Source： Solar System Research, Vol.45, Iss.5, 2011-10, pp. : 377-385

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Abstract

Since 1998, 97 new remote satellites of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune have been discovered. Since their brightness is rather weak, it is difficult to perform their photometry and determine their physical parameters. For 27 satellites from this group, different authors carried out special photometric investigations. For the other 70 satellites, the magnitudes accompanying the results of astrometric observations published in Minor Planet Circulars (MPC) are the only photometric data. In the present study, the photometric model parameters for all of the 97 remote satellites have been determined. From the hypothetic values of albedo and material density of the satellites, their sizes and gravitation parameters have been estimated. The whole volume of the obtained results is available in the database of the natural planetary satellites (NSDB) (Arlot and Emelyanov, 2009) published on the Internet ( http://www.sai.msu.ru/neb/nss/index.htm ).