On the Early In Situ Formation of Pluto's Small Satellites

The formation of Pluto's small satellites-Styx, Nix, Keberos, and Hydra-remains a mystery. Their orbits are nearly circular and are near mean-motion resonances and nearly coplanar with Charon's orbit. One scenario suggests that they all formed close to their current locations from a disk o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Astronomical journal 2018-04, Vol.155 (4), p.175
Main Authors: Woo, Jason Man Yin, Lee, Man Hoi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Astronomy
ASTROPHYSICS, COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
celestial mechanics
CENTER-OF-MASS SYSTEM
Charon
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
Computer simulation
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
DISTANCE
Eccentric orbits
Evolution
Fast Fourier transformations
FOURIER TRANSFORMATION
Kuiper belt objects: individual (Pluto)
Orbital resonances (celestial mechanics)
ORBITS
Particulates
planets and satellites: individual (Styx, Nix, Kerberos, Hydra)
Pluto
Pluto (dwarf planet)
Pluto satellites
RESONANCE
SATELLITES
Small satellites
Test methods
TEST PARTICLES
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Summary:The formation of Pluto's small satellites-Styx, Nix, Keberos, and Hydra-remains a mystery. Their orbits are nearly circular and are near mean-motion resonances and nearly coplanar with Charon's orbit. One scenario suggests that they all formed close to their current locations from a disk of debris that was ejected from the Charon-forming impact before the tidal evolution of Charon. The validity of this scenario is tested by performing N-body simulations with the small satellites treated as test particles and Pluto-Charon evolving tidally from an initial orbit at a few Pluto radii with initial eccentricity eC = 0 or 0.2. After tidal evolution, the free eccentricities efree of the test particles are extracted by applying fast Fourier transformation to the distance between the test particles and the center of mass of the system and compared with the current eccentricities of the four small satellites. The only surviving test particles with efree matching the eccentricities of the current satellites are those not affected by mean-motion resonances during the tidal evolution in a model with Pluto's effective tidal dissipation function Q = 100 and an initial eC = 0.2 that is damped down rapidly. However, these test particles do not have any preference to be in or near 4:1, 5:1, and 6:1 resonances with Charon. An alternative scenario may be needed to explain the formation of Pluto's small satellites.
ISSN:0004-6256
1538-3881
1538-3881
DOI:10.3847/1538-3881/aab367