An ALMA search for high albedo objects among the mid-sized Jupiter Trojan population
Abstract
We use ALMA measurements of 870 m thermal emission from a sample of mid-sized (15-40 km diameter) Jupiter Trojan asteroids to search for high albedo objects in this population. We calculate the diameters and albedos of each object using a thermal model which also incorporates {contemporaneous} Zwicky Transient Facility photometry to accurately measure the absolute magnitude at the time of the ALMA observation. We find that while many albedos are lower than reported from WISE, several small Trojans have high albedos independently measured both from ALMA and from WISE. The number of these high albedo objects is approximately consistent with expectations of the number of objects that recently have undergone large-scale impacts, suggesting that the interiors of freshly-crated Jupiter Trojans could contain high albedo materials such as ices.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2202.07066,
title = {An ALMA search for high albedo objects among the mid-sized Jupiter Trojan population},
author = {Anna M. Simpson and Michael E. Brown and Madeline J. Schemel and Bryan J. Butler},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2202.07066},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
AJ, in press