LIGHT CURVES OF 32 LARGE TRANSNEPTUNIAN OBJECTS

We present observations of 32 primarily bright, newly discovered Transneptunian objects (TNOs) observable from the Southern Hemisphere during 39 nights of observation with the Irenee du Pont 2.5 m telescope at Las Campanas Observatory. Our dataset includes objects in all dynamical classes, but is weighted toward scattered objects. We find 15 objects for which we can fit periods and amplitudes to the data, and place light curve amplitude upper limits on the other 17 objects. Combining our sample with the larger light curve sample in the literature, we find a 3 sigma correlation between light curve amplitude and absolute magnitude with fainter objects having larger light curve amplitudes. We looked for correlations between light curve and individual orbital properties, but did not find any statistically significant results. However, if we consider light curve properties with respect to object dynamical classification, we find statistically different distributions between the classical-scattered and classical-resonant populations at the 95.60% and 94.64% level, respectively, with the classical objects having larger amplitude light curves. The significance is 97.05% if the scattered and resonant populations are combined. The properties of binary light curves are largely consistent with the greater TNO population except in the case of tidally locked systems. All the Haumea family objects measured so far have light curve amplitudes and rotation periods <= 10 hr, suggesting that they are not significantly different from the larger TNO population. We expect multiple factors are influencing object rotations: object size dominates light curve properties except in the case of tidal, or proportionally large collisional interactions with other TNOs, the influence of the latter being different for each TNO sub-population. We also present phase curves and colors for some of our objects.