(47171) 1999 TC36 - Components

Components

The moon, discovered from 8 December 2001 observations by C. A. Trujillo and M. E. Brown using the Hubble Space Telescope and announced on 10 January 2002, has an estimated diameter of 132+8
−9 km and a semi-major axis of 7411 ± 12 km, orbiting its primary in 50.302 ± 0.001 days. The moon is estimated to only have a mass of about 0.75×1018 kg.

In 2009, analysis of Hubble images revealed that the primary is itself composed of two similar-sized components. This central pair has a semi-major axis of around 867 km and a period of about 1.9 days. Assuming equal albedos of about 0.079, the primary components are approximately A1=272+17
−19 km and A2=251+16
−17 km in diameter. The component B orbits the barycenter of the A1+A2 system. The system mass estimated from the motion of the component B is 12.75 ± 0.06×1018 kg. The orbital motion of the A1 and A2 components gives somewhat a higher estimated mass of 14.20 ± 0.05×1018 kg. The discrepancy is probably related to unaccounted gravitational interactions of the components in a complex triple system.

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