Stellar occultation studies of Saturn's rings with the Hubble Space Telescope

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, 1994.Includes bibliographical references (p. 157-162).by Amanda Sachie Bosh.Ph.D

Large Bodies in the Kuiper Belt

We present a survey for bright Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) and Centaurs, conducted at the Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) 0.9 m telescope with the KPNO 8k Mosaic CCD. The survey imaged 164 sq deg near opposition to a limiting red magnitude of 21.1. Three bright KBOs and one Centaur were found, the brightest KBO having red magnitude 19.7, about 700 km in diameter assuming a dark Centaur-like 4% albedo. We estimate the power-law differential size distribution of the Classical KBOs to have index q = 4.2 (+0.4)(-0.3), with the total number of Classical KBOs with diameters larger than 100 km equal to 4.7 (+1.6)(-1.0) x 10^4. Additionally, we find that if there is a maximum object size in the Kuiper Belt, it must be larger than 1000 km in diameter. By extending our model to larger size bodies, we estimate that 30 (+16)(-12) Charon-sized and 3.2 (+2.8)(-1.7) Pluto-sized Classical KBOs remain undiscovered.Comment: 33 pages, 7 figures, to appear in Nov 2001 Astronomical Journa

Material Around the Centaur (2060) Chiron from the 2018 November 28 UT Stellar Occultation

A stellar occultation of Gaia DR3 2646598228351156352 by the Centaur (2060) Chiron was observed from the South African Astronomical Observatory on 2018 November 28 UT. Here we present a positive detection of material surrounding Chiron from the 74-in telescope for this event. Additionally, a global atmosphere is ruled out at the tens of mircobar level for several possible atmospheric compositions. There are multiple 3-sigma drops in the 74-in light curve: three during immersion and two during emersion. Occulting material is located between 242-270 km from the center of the nucleus in the sky plane. Assuming the ring-plane orientation proposed for Chiron from the 2011 occultation, the flux drops are located at 352, 344, and 316 km (immersion), and 357, and 364 km (emersion) from the center, with normal optical depths of 0.26, 0.36, and 0.22 (immersion) and 0.26 and 0.18 (emersion), and equivalent widths between 0.7-1.3 km. This detection is similar to the previously proposed two-ring system and is located within the error bars of that ring-pole plane; however, the normal optical depths are less than half of the previous values, and three features are detected on immersion. These results suggest that the properties of the surrounding material have evolved between the 2011, 2018, and 2022 observations.Comment: Accepted by the Planetary Science Journal 21 Oct. 2023; 13 pages, 9 figures, 4 table

Minor Body Science with the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

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Haze in Pluto's atmosphere: Results from SOFIA and ground-based observations of the 2015 June 29 Pluto occultation

On UT 29 June 2015, the occultation by Pluto of a bright star (r′ = 11.9) was observed from the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) and several ground-based stations in New Zealand and Australia. Pre-event astrometry allowed for an in-flight update to the SOFIA team with the result that SOFIA was deep within the central flash zone (~22 km from center). Analysis of the combined data leads to the result that Pluto's middle atmosphere is essentially unchanged from 2011 and 2013 (Person et al. 2013; Bosh et al. 2015); there has been no significant expansion or contraction of the atmosphere. Additionally, our multi-wavelength observations allow us to conclude that a haze component in the atmosphere is required to reproduce the light curves obtained. This haze scenario has implications for understanding the photochemistry of Pluto's atmosphere