Related papers: Pluto's ephemeris from ground-based stellar occult…
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft discovered fields of sub-parallel sets of steep ridges situated in the high-altitude, low-latitude regions in Pluto's encounter hemisphere called 'bladed terrain'. Thought to be formed due to sublimational…
Context. During the last 30 years the surface of Pluto has been characterized, and its variability has been monitored, through continuous near-infrared spectroscopic observations. But in the visible range only few data are available. Aims.…
A recent occultation measurement of the dwarf planet Haumea (Ortiz et al. 2017) revealed an elongated shape with the longest axis comparable to Pluto's mean diameter. The chords also indicate a ring around Haumea's equatorial plane, where…
We have observed three near-Earth objects(NEOs), 2017VR12, Camillo, and Midas during the year 2018. The observations were made by the 1-m telescope of Yunnan Observatory over 2 nights. Their precise astrometric positions are derived from…
We determine accurate positions of the main satellites of Uranus: Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon. Positions of Uranus, as derived from those of these satellites, are also determined. The observational period spans from 1992 to…
We present Herschel PACS photometry of 18 Plutinos and determine sizes and albedos for these objects using thermal modeling. We analyze our results for correlations, draw conclusions on the Plutino size distribution, and compare to earlier…
The planetary ephemerides play a crucial role for spacecraft navigation, mission planning, reduction and analysis of the most precise astronomical observations. The construction of such ephemerides is highly constrained by the tracking…
Planets and moons reorient in space due to mass redistribution associated with various types of internal and external processes. While the equilibrium orientation of a tidally locked body is well understood, much less explored are the…
Since its discovery in 1930, Pluto's mass has been a value that has repeatedly been calculated. Additionally, the search for Planet X prior to Pluto's discovery results in mass calculations that date back several decades earlier. Over its…
During the New Horizons spacecraft's encounter with Pluto, the Alice ultraviolet spectrograph conducted a series of observations that detected emissions from both the interplanetary medium (IPM) and Pluto. In the direction of Pluto, the IPM…
We report six stellar occultations by (Saturn IX) Phoebe, an irregular satellite of Saturn, obtained between mid-2017 and mid-2019. The 2017 July 06 event is the first stellar occultation by an irregular satellite ever observed. The…
The U.S. Naval Observatory Robotic Astrometric Telescope (URAT) is observing the northern sky since April 2012 for an astrometric survey. Multiple overlaps per year are performed in a single bandpass (680$-$750 nm) using the "redlens" 20 cm…
Increasingly precise space-based photometry uncovers higher-order effects in transits, eclipses and phase curves which can be used to characterize exoplanets in novel ways. The subtle signature induced by a rotationally deformed exoplanet…
The Centaur (10199) Chariklo has the first rings system discovered around a small object. It was first observed using stellar occultation in 2013. Stellar occultations allow the determination of sizes and shapes with kilometre accuracy and…
Plutinos are Kuiper-belt objects that share the 3:2 Neptune resonance with Pluto. The long-term stability of Plutino orbits depends on their eccentricity. Plutinos with eccentricities close to Pluto (fractional eccentricity difference…
We present new astrometry of Pluto's three satellites from images taken of the Pluto system during 2002-3 with the High Resolution Camera (HRC) mode of the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope. The…
Ptolemy-s planetary model is an ancient geocentric astronomical model, describing the observed motion of the Sun and the planets. Ptolemy accounted for the deviations of planetary orbits from perfect circles by introducing two small and…
The impact of mega-constellations of satellites in low-Earth orbit during nighttime optical observations is assessed. Orbital geometry is used to calculate the impact of stellar occultations by satellites on the photometry of individual…
Pulsar positions can be measured with high precision using both pulsar timing methods and very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI). Pulsar timing positions are referenced to a solar-system ephemeris, whereas VLBI positions are referenced to…
Launch of the Gaia space observatory started a new era in astrometry when the accuracy of star coordinates increased by thousands of times. Significant improvement of accuracy was also expected for the coordinates of the Solar system…