A Search for Distant Satellites of Neptune

Michael J.I. Brown and Rachel L. Webster, PASA, 15 (3), 325
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Introduction

The recent discovery of two distant satellites of Uranus (Gladman et al. 1997) suggests similar bodies could be orbiting Neptune. Several surveys have looked for distant satellites of Neptune (Kuiper 1949, Kuiper 1961, Hogg et al. 1994) but all have had magnitude limits tex2html_wrap_inline96. A review of all previous surveys for satellites of Neptune is provided by Hogg et al. (1994). The most recent survey for distant satellites of Neptune by Hogg et al. (1994) used the UK Schmidt Telescope to search the entire Roche lobe of Neptune to tex2html_wrap_inline98.

We have used the Mount Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories' 40-inch telescope to search for distant satellites of Neptune. Our field of view was tex2html_wrap_inline92 so it was not practical to survey the entire Roche lobe of Neptune which extends tex2html_wrap_inline102 from the planet. Instead we concentrated on one field centred on Neptune to obtain the deepest images possible within the time constraints of the observing run (see next section). If Neptune had distant satellites at similar angular distances from the planet as the recently discovered Uranian moons (tex2html_wrap_inline104), they would have been within the field of view of our CCD.

As well as searching for distant satellites of Neptune, we also observed Neptune's distant moon Nereid. There has been considerable debate in the literature about the rotation of Nereid and the magnitude of its light curve (Schaefer and Schaefer 1988a, Schaefer and Schaefer 1988b, Bus and Larson 1989, Williams, Jones and Taylor 1991, Thomas, Veverka and Helfenstein 1991, Dobrovolskis 1995, Buratti, Goguen and Mosher 1997). Our observations are not a complete light curve of Nereid though they are consistent with Nereid not having large magnitude changes.


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