JWST Spectrophotometry of the Small Satellites of Uranus and Neptune
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1.
California Institute of Technology
Abstract
We use 1.4–4.6 μm multiband photometry of the small inner Uranian and Neptunian satellites obtained with the James Webb Space Telescope's near-infrared imager NIRCam to characterize their surface compositions. We find that the satellites of the ice giants have, to first order, similar compositions to one another, with a 3.0 μm absorption feature possibly associated with an O-H stretch, indicative of water ice or hydrated minerals. Additionally, the spectrophotometry for the small ice-giant satellites matches spectra of some Neptune Trojans and excited Kuiper Belt objects, suggesting shared properties. Future spectroscopy of these small satellites is necessary to identify and better constrain their specific surface compositions.
Copyright and License
Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
Acknowledgement
The data were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-03127 for JWST. These observations are associated with program 2739, with the relevant observations linked at the following doi:10.17909/ypkv-m919. The authors acknowledge PI Klaus Pontoppidan for developing the observing program.
Facilities
JWST (NIRCam) -
Software References
Astropy (Astropy Collaboration et al. 2022), Photutils (Bradley et al. 2023), JWST pipeline version 1.11.3 (Bushouse et al. 2023)
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Additional details
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- NAS 5-03127
- Caltech groups
- Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences