New Constraint on the Atmosphere of (50000) Quaoar from a Stellar Occultation

We report observations of a stellar occultation by the classical Kuiper Belt object (50000) Quaoar that occurred on 2019 June 28. A single-chord high-cadence (2 Hz) photometry data set was obtained with the Tomo-e Gozen CMOS camera mounted on the 1.05 m Schmidt telescope at Kiso Observatory. The obt...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Astronomical journal 2019-12, Vol.158 (6), p.236
Main Authors: Arimatsu, Ko, Ohsawa, Ryou, Hashimoto, George L., Urakawa, Seitaro, Takahashi, Jun, Tozuka, Miyako, Itoh, Yoichi, Yamashita, Misato, Usui, Fumihiko, Aoki, Tsutomu, Arima, Noriaki, Doi, Mamoru, Ichiki, Makoto, Ikeda, Shiro, Ita, Yoshifusa, Kasuga, Toshihiro, Kobayashi, Naoto, Kokubo, Mitsuru, Konishi, Masahiro, Maehara, Hiroyuki, Matsunaga, Noriyuki, Miyata, Takashi, Morii, Mikio, Morokuma, Tomoki, Motohara, Kentaro, Nakada, Yoshikazu, Okumura, Shin-ichiro, Sako, Shigeyuki, Sarugaku, Yuki, Sato, Mikiya, Shigeyama, Toshikazu, Soyano, Takao, Takahashi, Hidenori, Tarusawa, Ken'ichi, Tominaga, Nozomu, Watanabe, Jun-ichi, Yamashita, Takuya, Yoshikawa, Makoto
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Astronomy
Atmosphere
Atmospheric methane
Atmospheric refraction
Classical Kuiper belt objects
CMOS
Egress
Ice formation
Kuiper belt
Methane
Photometry
Pluto
Pressure
Quaoar
Saturation vapor pressure
Schmidt telescopes
Solar system
Solar system astronomy
Stellar occultation
Surface pressure
Surface temperature
Trans-Neptunian objects
Vapor pressure
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Description
Summary:We report observations of a stellar occultation by the classical Kuiper Belt object (50000) Quaoar that occurred on 2019 June 28. A single-chord high-cadence (2 Hz) photometry data set was obtained with the Tomo-e Gozen CMOS camera mounted on the 1.05 m Schmidt telescope at Kiso Observatory. The obtained ingress and egress data do not show any indication of atmospheric refraction and allow new 1 and 3 upper limits of 6 and 16 nbar, respectively, to be set for the surface pressure of a pure methane atmosphere. These upper limits are lower than the saturation vapor pressure of methane at Quaoar's expected mean surface temperature (T ∼ 44 K) and imply the absence of a ∼10 nbar-level global atmosphere formed by methane ice on Quaoar's surface.
ISSN:0004-6256
1538-3881
DOI:10.3847/1538-3881/ab5058