A Survey for Satellites of Venus

Authors: Scott S. Sheppard (Carnegie, DTM), Chadwick A. Trujillo (Gemini)

(Submitted on 15 Jun 2009)

Abstract: We present a systematic survey for satellites of Venus using the Baade-Magellan 6.5 meter telescope and IMACS wide-field CCD imager at Las Campanas observatory in Chile. In the outer portions of the Hill sphere the search was sensitive to a limiting red magnitude of about 20.4, which corresponds to satellites with radii of a few hundred meters when assuming an albedo of 0.1. In the very inner portions of the Hill sphere scattered light from Venus limited the detection to satellites of about a kilometer or larger. Although several main belt asteroids were found, no satellites (moons) of Venus were detected.

Comments: Published in July 2009 (Sheppard, S. and Trujillo, C. 2009, Icarus, 202, 12-16.)

Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)

Cite as: arXiv:0906.2781v1 [astro-ph.EP]

Submission history

From: Scott S. Sheppard [view email]

[v1] Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:40:40 GMT (32kb)

http://arxiv.org/abs/0906.2781