We present near-infrared spectral measurements of Themis family asteroid (379) Huenna (D~98 km) and its 6 km satellite using SpeX on the NASA IRTF. The companion was farther than 1.5" from the primary at the time of observations and was approximately 5 magnitudes dimmer. We describe a method for separating and extracting the signal of a companion asteroid when the signal is not entirely resolved from the primary. The spectrum of (379) Huenna has a broad, shallow feature near 1 {\mu}m and a low slope, characteristic of C-type asteroids. The secondary's spectrum is consistent with the taxonomic classification of C-complex or X-complex. The quality of the data was not sufficient to identify any subtle feature in the secondary's spectrum.
@article{arxiv.1102.1623,
title = {A spectral comparison of (379) Huenna and its satellite},
author = {Francesca DeMeo and Benoit Carry and Franck Marchis and Mirel Birlan and Richard P. Binzel and Schelte J. Bus and Pascal Descamps and Alin Nedelcu and Michael Busch and Herve Bouy},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1102.1623},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
6 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables - Accepted for publication in Icarus