Abstract
Abstract We describe the discovery of a satellite of the Trojan asteroid (3548) Eurybates in images obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope. The satellite was detected on three separate epochs, two in 2018 September and one in 2020 January. The satellite has a brightness in all three epochs consistent with an effective diameter of d 2 = 1.2 ± 0.4 km. The projected separation from Eurybates was s ∼ 1700–2300 km and varied in position, consistent with a large range of possible orbits. Eurybates is a target of the Lucy Discovery mission and the early detection of a satellite provides an opportunity for a significant expansion of the scientific return from this encounter.
Highlights
Starting in 2018, the first deep satellite search of the Trojan asteroids that are targets of NASA’s Lucy mission (Levison et al 2017) was conducted using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST; Noll et al 2018)
The first two sets of observations of Eurybates occurred on 2018 September 12 and 14 (Table 1) using HST’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) as part of HST general observer (GO) program GO-15144
We find a wide range of possible orbits for assumed bulk densities ranging from ρ = 500–2500 kg m−3
Summary
Starting in 2018, the first deep satellite search of the Trojan asteroids that are targets of NASA’s Lucy mission (Levison et al 2017) was conducted using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST; Noll et al 2018). We report the discovery of a previously unknown satellite of the Lucy target Eurybates, a d = 63.9 ± 0.3 km body (Grav et al 2012) that is the largest member of the only-known major disruptive collisional family in the Trojans (Brož & Rozehnal 2011). From these observations, we have identified a roughly 1 km diameter satellite with the temporary designation S/2018 (3548) 1. Consistent with what is known about the Eurybates collisional family
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