Comprehensive Wide-Band Magnitudes and Albedos for the Planets, With Applications to Exo-Planets and Planet Nine

TL;DR

This paper provides comprehensive magnitude and albedo data for planets across multiple photometric systems, introduces new Sloan magnitudes, and applies these to exo-planet detection and the hypothetical Planet Nine.

Contribution

It offers the first Sloan magnitudes for planets, validates albedo consistency across systems, and introduces delta stellar magnitudes for exo-planet observation strategies.

Findings

Sloan magnitudes for planets are established for the first time.

Planetary albedos are consistent across different photometric systems.

Delta stellar magnitudes can aid in exo-planet detection and characterization.

Abstract

Complete sets of reference magnitudes in all 7 Johnson-Cousins bands (U, B, V, R, I, Rc and Ic) and the 5 principal Sloan bands (u', g', r', i', and z') are presented for the 8 planets. These data are accompanied by illumination phase functions and other formulas which characterize the instantaneous brightness of the planets. The main source of Johnson-Cousins magnitudes is a series of individualized photometric studies reported in recent years. Gaps in that dataset were filled with magnitudes synthesized in this study from published spectrophotometry. The planetary Sloan magnitudes, which are established here for the first time, are an average of newly recorded Sloan filter photometry, synthetic magnitudes and values transformed from the Johnson-Cousins system. Geometric albedos derived from these two sets of magnitudes are consistent within each photometric system and between the systems for all planets and in all bands. This consistency validates the albedos themselves as well as the magnitudes from which they were derived. In addition, a quantity termed the delta stellar magnitude is introduced to indicate the difference between the magnitude of a planet and that of its parent star. A table of these delta values for exo-planets possessing a range of physical characteristics is presented. The delta magnitudes are for phase angle 90 degrees where a planet is near the greatest apparent separation from its star. This quantity may be useful in exo-planet detection and observation strategies when an estimate of the signal-to-noise ratio is needed. Likewise, the phase curves presented in this paper can be used for characterizing exo-planets. Finally, magnitudes for the proposed Planet Nine are estimated, and we note that P9 may be especially faint at red and near-IR wavelengths.