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.
@article{arxiv.0906.2781,
title = {A Survey for Satellites of Venus},
author = {Scott S. Sheppard and Chadwick A. Trujillo},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0906.2781},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
Published in July 2009 (Sheppard, S. and Trujillo, C. 2009, Icarus, 202, 12-16.)