Historical Surveys to Rubin First Look: Absolute Colors of trans-Neptunian objects

TL;DR

This study compiles extensive photometric data of trans-Neptunian objects from multiple surveys, including early Rubin Observatory data, revealing color variations and emphasizing the survey's discovery potential.

Contribution

It provides the first photometric measurements from Rubin Observatory during RFL, expanding the dataset and enabling detailed analysis of TNO color properties.

Findings

Redder objects tend to become redder with increasing phase angle.

Colors show no strong bimodality or correlation with orbital parameters after phase correction.

Rubin Observatory's early data covers faint objects, demonstrating survey discovery potential.

Abstract

We present a comprehensive photometric study of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) by combining data from SDSS, Col-OSSOS, DES, and the recent Rubin First Look (RFL) data. Our database comprises 43 677 measurements in the u, g, r, i, and z filters, from which we derived 2 193 phase curves for 781 unique objects. From these data, we computed 2 542 absolute color measurements for 633 objects, allowing a statistical characterization of phase coloring effects. Our results show correlations between colors at opposition and their variation with phase angle, indicating that redder (bluer) objects tend to become redder (bluer) as the phase angle increases. With a larger sample and the application of phase corrections, the colors show no strong bimodality nor correlation with orbital parameters. Notably, our dataset includes the first photometric measurements from Rubin Observatory during RFL, covering eight objects: five newly discovered TNOs and three previously known. These early LSST observations occupy sparsely sampled regions of parameter space, particularly at faint magnitudes, highlighting the discovery and characterization potential of the full survey.