Discovery and Characterization of Trans-Neptunian Binaries in Large-Scale Surveys

TL;DR

This paper discusses the potential of large-scale ground-based optical surveys, especially LSST, to discover and characterize a significant number of wide-separation Trans-Neptunian Binaries, enhancing understanding of their properties and dynamics.

Contribution

It proposes a method to utilize future surveys like LSST for large-scale detection and orbital analysis of ultra-wide Trans-Neptunian Binaries, building on previous ground-based characterizations.

Findings

Wide TNBs are valuable for understanding Kuiper Belt dynamics.

Future surveys can significantly increase the sample size of known wide TNBs.

Ground-based surveys are feasible for orbital characterization of these binaries.

Abstract

The dynamically cold component of the Kuiper Belt is host to a population of very widely separated, near-equal mass binary systems. Such binaries, representing the tail of the separation distribution of the more common, more tightly-bound systems, are known to have on-sky separations up to ~4". Their wide separations make them highly valuable due to their delicacy and sensitivity to perturbation, and also makes them relatively easy targets to characterize from the ground. Parker et al. (2011) present a ground-based characterization of seven such systems with separations at discovery ranging from 0."5-4", and we will adopt these systems as the prototypes for the ultra-wide binaries of the Kuiper Belt. Here we present the prospects for using future large-scale ground-based optical surveys (with LSST as our baseline survey) to measure the orbital properties of a large sample of these widely separated Trans-Neptunian Binaries (TNBs).