Name: Chad Trujillo

Institution: Gemini North

e-mail: trujillo(no-spam)gemini.edu

Partner Contry: GS

Science Meeting: Yes

User Meeting: Yes

NGO Staff Meeting: Yes

Presentation: Yes

Format: Oral

Title: Gemini Observations of Sedna, the Most Unusual Solar System Object

Co-author: M. Brown, D. Rabinowitz

Co-authors' Institutions: Caltech, Yale

Abstract:

We have collected very deep spectra of Sedna, the most distant object in the solar system after Eris. Sedna is unique in the solar system as it has the most distant perihelion of any known body, never venturing closer than 76 AU from the sun, or about 2.5 times the distance of Neptune. Thus, of all the known solar system bodies, it has the greatest potential for harboring unaltered material from the epoch of solar system formation. Given its cold thermal environment and the fact that Sedna is the reddest body in the outer solar system, its surface composition is of paramount interest. We present ultra-deep NIRI spectra of Sedna in the H and K bands where primordial ice signatures are found. We will also compare these observations to recent observations of other bodies using NIFS and the Laser Guide Star Adaptive Optics (LGS AO) system, to demonstrate the performance enhancement that NIFS LGS can provide for any very faint point source.

Comments:

I have also previously emailed Inger Jorgensen, Dennis Crabtree and Michael West about giving an LGS instrumentation talk.