Photometric Measurements of H2O Ice Crystallinity on Trans-Neptunian Objects

TL;DR

This study introduces a new photometric method to measure H2O ice crystallinity on trans-Neptunian objects, revealing variations in surface ice phases and potential links to their physical properties.

Contribution

The paper develops a novel near-infrared photometric technique to assess H2O ice crystallinity efficiently on TNOs, providing new insights into their surface compositions.

Findings

High crystalline fractions on Haumea, Quaoar, and Orcus.

Amorphous H2O ice is prevalent on Orcus, indicating less surface crystallization.

Crystalline H2O ice detected on smaller objects Typhon and 2008 AP129.

Abstract

We present a measurement of H2O ice crystallinity on the surface of trans-neptunian objects (TNOs) with near-infrared narrow-band imaging. The newly developed photometric technique allows us to efficiently determine the strength of an 1.65-um absorption feature in crystalline H2O ice. Our data for three large objects, Haumea, Quaoar, and Orcus, which are known to contain crystalline H2O ice on the surfaces, show a reasonable result with high fractions of the crystalline phase. It can also be pointed out that if the H2O-ice grain size is larger than ~20 um, the crystallinities of these objects are obviously below 1.0, which suggest the presence of the amorphous phase. Especially, Orcus exhibits a high abundance of amorphous H2O ice compared to Haumea and Quaoar, possibly indicating a correlation between bulk density of the bodies and surface crystallization degree. We also found the presence of crystalline H2O ice on Typhon and 2008 AP129, both of which are smaller than the minimum size limit for inducing cryovolcanism as well as a transition from amorphous to crystalline through the thermal evolution due to the decay of long-lived isotopes.