Dynamical capture in the Pluto–Charon system

Santos, P. M. Pires dos; Morbidelli, Alessandro; Nesvorný, David

doi:10.1007/s10569-012-9442-y

Cited by 18 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Cheng et al (2014b) show a method to capture and transport disc material outward in a low (albeit non-zero) eccentricity orbit though capture into multiple Lindblad resonances while Charon is tidally evolving; however, they are unable to migrate material at the 3:1 and 4:1 commensurability with Charon (the locations of Styx and Nix). Pires dos Santos et al (2012) suggests that the current moons could come from collisions of other bodies near Pluto in the Kuiper belt, but the collision time-scales for massive enough objects are too long. Walsh & Levison (2015) suggest that the moons could form from disruption of an existing satellite in the system.…”

Section: Pluto's Moonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Fate of Debris in the Pluto-Charon System

Smullen¹,

Kratter²

2017

Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc.

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The Pluto-Charon system has come into sharper focus following the flyby of New Horizons. We use N-body simulations to probe the unique dynamical history of this binary dwarf planet system. We follow the evolution of the debris disc that might have formed during the Charonforming giant impact. First, we note that in situ formation of the four circumbinary moons is extremely difficult if Charon undergoes eccentric tidal evolution. We track collisions of disc debris with Charon, estimating that hundreds to hundreds of thousands of visible craters might arise from 0.3-5 km radius bodies. New Horizons data suggesting a dearth of these small craters may place constraints on the disc properties. While tidal heating will erase some of the cratering history, both tidal and radiogenic heating may also make it possible to differentiate disc debris craters from Kuiper belt object craters. We also track the debris ejected from the Pluto-Charon system into the Solar system; while most of this debris is ultimately lost from the Solar system, a few tens of 10-30 km radius bodies could survive as a Pluto-Charon collisional family. Most are plutinos in the 3:2 resonance with Neptune, while a small number populate nearby resonances. We show that migration of the giant planets early in the Solar system's history would not destroy this collisional family. Finally, we suggest that identification of such a family would likely need to be based on composition as they show minimal clustering in relevant orbital parameters.

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Section: Pluto's Moonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Fate of Debris in the Pluto-Charon System

Smullen¹,

Kratter²

2017

Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc.

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“…The total amount of captured material depends on the orbital and size distributions of the passing material. Pires dos Santos et al (2012) explored this mechanism, finding that large objects that would carry significant mass have collision timescales that are too long, resulting in a very small total amount of captured mass.…”

Section: Formation Of Charon and Debrismentioning

confidence: 99%

Formation and Evolution of Pluto’s Small Satellites

Walsh

Levison

2015

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Plutoʼs system of five known satellites is in a puzzling orbital configuration. Each of the four small satellites are on low-eccentricity and low-inclination orbits situated near a mean motion resonance with the largest satellite Charon. The Pluto-Charon binary likely formed as a result of a giant impact, and so the simplest explanation for the small satellites is that they accreted from the debris of that collision. The Pluto-Charon binary has evolved outward since its formation due to tidal forces, which drove them into their current doubly synchronous state. Meanwhile, leftover debris from the formation of Charon was not initially distant enough from Pluto-Charon to explain the orbits of the current small satellites. The outstanding problems of the system are the movement of debris outward and the small satellites' location near mean motion resonances with Charon. This work explores the dynamical behavior of the collisionally interacting debris orbiting the Pluto-Charon system. While this work specifically tests initial disk and ring configurations designed to mimic the aftermath of the disruption of satellites by heliocentric impactors, we generally find that collisional interactions can help move material outward and keep otherwise unstable material dynamically bound to the Pluto-Charon system. These processes can produce rings of debris whose orbits evolve rapidly due to collisional processes, with increasing pericenters and decreasing semimajor axes. While these rings and disks of debris eventually build satellites that are significantly farther out than the initial locations of a disrupted satellite, they do not show a strong preference for building satellites in or near mean motion resonances with Charon under a wide array of tested conditions.

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“…Collisions between bodies in the disk damped down the orbital eccentricities and inclinations, leading to the formation of a co-planar and circular debris disk in which the small satellites can be formed near their current positions. However, this scenario was ruled out by Pires dos Santos et al (2012), as they found that the timescale of temporary capture for objects that are massive enough to produce Nix and Hydra is much smaller than the timescale for another object to come in and collide with it. Their assumed masses for Nix and Hydra are adopted from Tholen et al (2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Early In Situ Formation of Pluto’s Small Satellites

Woo

Lee

2018

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The formation of Pluto's small satellites -Styx, Nix, Keberos and Hydra -remains a mystery. Their orbits are nearly circular and are near mean-motion resonances and nearly coplanar with Charon's orbit. One scenario suggests that they all formed close to their current locations from a disk of debris that was ejected from the Charon-forming impact before the tidal evolution of Charon. The validity of this scenario is tested by performing N -body simulations with the small satellites treated as test particles and Pluto-Charon evolving tidally from an initial orbit at a few Pluto radii with initial eccentricity e C = 0 or 0.2. After tidal evolution, the free eccentricities e free of the test particles are extracted by applying fast Fourier transformation to the distance between the test particles and the center of mass of the system and compared with the current eccentricities of the four small satellites. The only surviving test particles with e free matching the eccentricities of the current satellites are those not affected by meanmotion resonances during the tidal evolution in a model with Pluto's effective tidal dissipation function Q = 100 and an initial e C = 0.2 that is damped down rapidly. However, these test particles do not have any preference to be in or near 4:1, 5:1 and 6:1 resonances with Charon. An alternative scenario may be needed to explain the formation of Pluto's small satellites.

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Dynamical capture in the Pluto–Charon system

Cited by 18 publications

References 22 publications

The Fate of Debris in the Pluto-Charon System

The Fate of Debris in the Pluto-Charon System

Formation and Evolution of Pluto’s Small Satellites

On the Early In Situ Formation of Pluto’s Small Satellites

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