A spectral comparison of (379) Huenna and its satellite

Francesca E. Demeo (1, 2) , Benoît Carry (2, 3) , Franck Marchis (4) , Mirel Birlan (5) , Richard P. Binzel (1, 5) , Schelte J. Bus (6) , Pascal Descamps (5) , Alin Nedelcu (5, 7) , Michael Busch (8) , Hervé Bouy (3)

1 EAPS - Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences [MIT, Cambridge]
2 LESIA - Laboratoire d'études spatiales et d'instrumentation en astrophysique
3 ESA - Agence Spatiale Européenne = European Space Agency
4 Department of Mathematics [Berkeley]
5 IMCCE - Institut de Mécanique Céleste et de Calcul des Ephémérides
6 Institute for Astronomy [Honolulu]
7 Astronomical Institute of Romanian Academy
8 Department of Earth and Space Sciences [Los Angeles]

We present near-infrared spectral measurements of Themis family Asteroid (379) Huenna (D ˜ 98 km) and its 6 km satellite using SpeX on the NASA IRTF. The companion was farther than 1.5″ from the primary at the time of observations and was approximately 5 magnitudes dimmer. We describe a method for separating and extracting the signal of a companion asteroid when the signal is not entirely resolved from the primary. The spectrum of (379) Huenna has a broad, shallow feature near 1 μm and a low slope, characteristic of C-type asteroids. The secondary's spectrum is consistent with the taxonomic classification of C-complex or X-complex. The quality of the data was not sufficient to identify any subtle feature in the secondary's spectrum.

Mots clés: Asteroids; Spectroscopy

Domaines: Planétologie et astrophysique de la terre [astro-ph.EP]; Planétologie et astrophysique de la terre [astro-ph.EP]

Francesca E. Demeo, Benoît Carry, Franck Marchis, Mirel Birlan, Richard P. Binzel, et al.. A spectral comparison of (379) Huenna and its satellite. Icarus, 2011, 212, pp. 677-681. ⟨10.1016/J.ICARUS.2011.02.002⟩. ⟨hal-00615199⟩