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A preliminary orbit for the satellite of dwarf planet (136472) Makemake

Daniel Bamberger

Abstract

I present a preliminary orbit for the satellite of dwarf planet (136472) Makemake, based on archival Hubble Space Telescope images taken on 13 days between April 2015 and February 2019. The satellite was detected on twelve of them. A best-fit circular orbit has a period of $18.023 \pm 0.017$ d, a semi-major axis of $22250 \pm 780$ km, and an inclination of $83.7^{\circ} \pm 1.0^{\circ}$ relative to the line of sight. That orbit is nearly edge-on, raising the possibility of ongoing or imminent mutual events between Makemake and its satellite.

A preliminary orbit for the satellite of dwarf planet (136472) Makemake

Abstract

I present a preliminary orbit for the satellite of dwarf planet (136472) Makemake, based on archival Hubble Space Telescope images taken on 13 days between April 2015 and February 2019. The satellite was detected on twelve of them. A best-fit circular orbit has a period of d, a semi-major axis of km, and an inclination of relative to the line of sight. That orbit is nearly edge-on, raising the possibility of ongoing or imminent mutual events between Makemake and its satellite.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 3 sections, 2 figures, 1 table.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Observations and measurements
  3. Results

Figures (2)

  • Figure 1: Makemake and MK2, imaged in 2018 and 2019. North is up and east is left. The white and red dots in the insets in the upper right corner of each frame indicate the predicted positions of Makemake and MK2, respectively, based on the nominal orbit derived in this paper.
  • Figure 2: The nominal circular orbit of MK2, with the detections that were used for the fit. The red point corresponds to the discovery observation (27 April 2015). North is up and east is left.