A Survey for Satellites of Venus

TL;DR

This systematic survey used a large telescope to search for Venus's satellites, achieving sensitivity to small objects but detecting none, thereby constraining the presence of moons around Venus.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive search for Venusian satellites using wide-field imaging, setting limits on the size and brightness of potential moons.

Findings

No satellites of Venus were detected.

The survey was sensitive to satellites a few hundred meters in radius.

Outer Hill sphere sensitivity reached magnitude 20.4.

Abstract

We present a systematic survey for satellites of Venus using the Baade-Magellan 6.5 meter telescope and IMACS wide-field CCD imager at Las Campanas observatory in Chile. In the outer portions of the Hill sphere the search was sensitive to a limiting red magnitude of about 20.4, which corresponds to satellites with radii of a few hundred meters when assuming an albedo of 0.1. In the very inner portions of the Hill sphere scattered light from Venus limited the detection to satellites of about a kilometer or larger. Although several main belt asteroids were found, no satellites (moons) of Venus were detected.