EPSC-DPS2011/04: Spinning hourglass object may be the first of many to be discovered in Kuiper belt

EPSC-DPS JOINT MEETING 2011 PRESS NOTICE Ref. PN: EPSC11/04

The bizarre, hourglass-shaped Kuiper belt object 2001QG298 spins round like a propeller as it orbits the Sun, according to an astronomer from Queens University Belfast. The discovery that the spinning object is tilted at nearly 90 degrees to the ecliptic plane is surprising, and suggests that this type of object could be very common in the Kuiper belt. The finding will be presented by Dr Pedro Lacerda at the Joint Meeting of the European Planetary Science Congress and the Division for Planetary Sciences in Nantes, France, on 3 October 2011.

The Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) orbit the sun beyond Neptune and are the best preserved leftovers of the formation of the planets. 2001QG298 is a remarkable KBO made up from two components that orbit each other very closely, possibly touching.
“Imagine that you glue two eggs together tip to tip – that’s approximately the shape of 2001QG298. It looks a bit like an hourglass,” says Lacerda.

The strange shape of 2001QG298 was uncovered by Dr Scott Sheppard and Prof David Jewitt in 2004. They noticed that 2001QG298’s apparent brightness periodically tripled every 7 hours or so.

“The object is so distant that we cannot resolve its shape. But this brightness oscillation, called a lightcurve, reveals the strange shape of 2001QG298 as it spins round. The object appears faint at times because one lobe is hidden behind the other, so less area is reflecting sunlight. As the hidden component rotates back into view, we can see the full hour-glass shape. The reflecting area increases and the whole thing looks brighter,” explains Lacerda.

However, Lacerda’s new study shows that 2001QG298’s rotation is almost perpendicular to the plane of its orbit around the sun. Lacerda re-measured the object’s lightcurve in late 2010 and noticed that it had changed from Sheppard and Jewitt’s observations. The lightcurve variation has become visibly shallower.

“It was impossible to tell from the original observations if the rotation and the orbital plane of 2001QG298 were aligned or perpendicular i.e. whether the object spun round horizontally like the blades on a helicopter or rotated vertically like the propeller of an aeroplane. The changes to the lightcurve variation show that it must be approximately vertical. As 2001QG298 moves round in its orbit of The sun, our viewing geometry of the ‘propeller’ is gradually opening out from edge-on to seeing the whirling ‘blades’ full-face. This means that more of the reflecting surface is becoming visible at all times so the variation in the object’s brightness gradually disappears,” says Lacerda.

The most important consequence of this finding is that it suggests that this type of double KBO could be very common. When in 2004 Sheppard and Jewitt found 2001QG298 in a sample of 34 KBOs they realised that they were fortunate to spot its binary nature – if it had not happened to be edge-on at the time of their observations, they would not have seen the extreme lightcurve variation. They estimated that approximately 10% of all KBOs are contact binaries, assuming that their tilts are random.
However, Lacerda believes that the tilts of contact binaries may not actually be random and that objects similar to 2001QG298 could be even more common.

“It was a surprise to find that 2001QG298 is inclined by 90 degrees, but that’s not the first time we’ve seen this in a contact binary,” he speculates. “There is another famous doublet object, a large Trojan asteroid called 624 Hektor. That object is also tilted almost 90 degrees.”
If contact binaries tend to be highly tilted then the chance of spotting their characteristic variable lightcurve is even smaller – only about twice per orbit. The identification of one in a small sample implies that contact binaries may be even more abundant than Sheppard and Jewitt first thought. Lacerda estimates that as many as 25% of KBOs are contact binaries.
“If contact binaries do tend to be very inclined that may be telling us something about how these objects formed,” concludes Lacerda.

IMAGES AND ANIMATION

Images can be found at:
http://tinyurl.com/ExtremeAndExtremelyTiltedKBO

This video shows an artistic rendering of 2001QG298 as seen from earth between 2004 and 2020. It shows how the observing angle and the lightcurve change as the object moves in its orbit along the sun: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2fpPO6_0uk

SCIENTIFIC CONTACTS

Pedro Lacerda
Michael West Fellow, Queen’s University Belfast

FURTHER INFORMATION

EPSC-DPS JOINT MEETING 2011

The EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2011 represents the first cooperation between the European Planetary Science Congress (EPSC) organised by the Europlanet Research Infrastructure and the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. The meeting is being organised in association with the European Geosciences Union and with the support of the Université de Nantes. More than 1800 abstracts for oral presentations and posters have been submitted for the meeting.

EPSC-DPS 2011 provides a platform for the worldwide planetary sciences community to exchange and present results, develop new ideas and network. It has a distinctively interactive style, with an extensive mix of talks, workshops and posters, intended to provide a stimulating environment for the community to meet. The meeting covers the entire scope of the planetary sciences.
Details of the congress can be found at the official website:
http://meetings.copernicus.org/epsc-dps2011/

EUROPLANET

The Europlanet Research Infrastructure is a major (€6 million) programme co-funded by the European Union under the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Commission.
The Europlanet Research Infrastructure brings together the European planetary science community through a range of Networking Activities, aimed at fostering a culture of cooperation in the field of planetary sciences, Transnational Access Activities, providing European researchers with access to a range of laboratory and field site facilities tailored to the needs of planetary research, as well as on-line access to the available planetary science data, information and software tools, through the Integrated and Distributed Information Service. These programmes are underpinned by Joint Research Activities, which are developing and improving the facilities, models, software tools and services offered by Europlanet.

Europlanet Project website: http://www.europlanet-ri.eu/
Europlanet Outreach website: http://www.europlanet-eu.org//
Follow @europlanetmedia on Twitter

DPS

The Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) is the largest organization of professional planetary scientists in the world. The DPS was formed in 1968 as a sub-organization within the AAS devoted to solar system and extrasolar planet research. Today it is the largest special interest Division of the AAS

DPS Website: http://dps.aas.org/