Journal
ASTRONOMICAL JOURNAL
Volume 127, Issue 4, Pages 2413-2417Publisher
UNIV CHICAGO PRESS
DOI: 10.1086/382513
Keywords
minor planets, asteroids; techniques : image processing
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We imaged the recently discovered bright Kuiper belt object (50000) Quaoar with the Hubble Space Telescope High Resolution Camera to directly determine its size. The point-spread function (PSF) of each of 16 images was carefully measured from a field star 13 from Quaoar, and the expected PSF at the location of Quaoar was convolved with Quaoar's motion vector and a model resolved disk. A least-squares analysis was performed to find the best-fit disk size. The apparent diameter of Quaoar was resolved as 40.4 +/- 1.8 milliarcseconds. Accounting for the uncertainty due to an unknown limb-darkening function, the size of Quaoar is 1260 +/- 190 km with red and blue albedos of 0.092(-0.023)(+0.036) and 0.101(-0.024)(+0.039), respectively. These albedos are significantly higher than the canonically assumed value of 4%. Quaoar is the largest currently known minor planet.
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