Satellite searches at Pluto and Mars

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2005.10.032 Byline: Philip D. Nicholson (a), Brett J. Gladman (b) Keywords: Pluto; Mars; Satellites of Mars; Satellites; general; Trans-neptunian objects Abstract: We report the results of searches for outer satellites of Pluto and Mars, carried out with the Hale 5-m telescope in 1999 and 2001, respectively. No new satellites were found down to limiting magnitudes of m.sub.R=25.0 at Pluto and m.sub.V[approximately equal to]22 at Mars, corresponding to diameters of 35 and 1 km, respectively, for an assumed geometric albedo of 0.07. A faint trans-neptunian object, 1999 LB.sub.37, was discovered in the Pluto fields; given the depth of our survey, discovery of one such object in the background Kuiper belt is in reasonable agreement with expectations. Author Affiliation: (a) Department of Astronomy, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA (b) Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia, 6224 Agricultural Road, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1, Canada Article History: Received 3 May 2005; Revised 21 October 2005