Updated Phoebe's orbit

K. X. Shen (1) , S. N. Li , R. C. Qiao (1, 2) , G. Dourneau (3, 4, 5, 6) , H. Y. Zhang (7) , Z. H. Tang (2, 8) , S. H. Wang (1, 8)

1 National Time Service Center
2 United Laboratory for Optical Astrometry
3 OASU - Observatoire aquitain des sciences de l'univers
4 LAB - Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Bordeaux [Pessac]
5 UB - Université Sciences et Technologies - Bordeaux 1
6 L3AB - Laboratoire d'astrodynamique, d'astrophysique et d'aéronomie de bordeaux
7 EAST CHINA UNIVERSITY
8 SHAO - Shanghai Astronomical Observatory [Shanghai]

In recent years, many new CCD observations of Phoebe, the ninth Saturnian satellite, were published. In this paper, we have used all the observations of Phoebe available until 2009 to update Phoebe's orbit. These observations represent a total number of 2994 positions, spread over a time-interval of 105 years, from 1904 to 2009. The accuracy of the updated orbit of Phoebe presented here has been improved to about 0.1 arcsec as it has been fitted to a large number of new high-accuracy observations. However, the accuracy of the orbit remains limited by the accuracy of the observations. Moreover, we have shown that the new orbit is in quite good agreement with the very reliable JPL ephemeris, within less than 20 mas.

Mots clés: planets and satellites: individual: Phoebe; planets and satellites: individual: Saturn

Domaines: Instrumentation et méthodes pour l'astrophysique [astro-ph.IM]; Instrumentation et méthodes pour l'astrophysique [astro-ph.IM]

K. X. Shen, S. N. Li, R. C. Qiao, G. Dourneau, H. Y. Zhang, et al.. Updated Phoebe's orbit. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2011, 417 (3), pp.2387-2391. ⟨10.1111/J.1365-2966.2011.19420.X⟩. ⟨hal-00619450⟩