The Dwarf Planet Makemake as seen by X-Shooter

Abstract

Makemake is one of the brightest known trans-Neptunian objects, as such, it has been widely observed. Nevertheless, its visible to near-infrared spectrum has not been completely observed in medium resolving power, aimed at studying in detail the absorption features of CH${}_4$ ice. In this paper we present the spectrum of Makemake observed with X-Shooter at the Very Large Telescope (Chile). We analyse the detected features, measuring their location and depth. Furthermore, we compare Makemake's spectrum with that of Eris, obtained with the same instrument and similar setup, to conclude that the bands of the CH${}_4$ ice in both objects show similar shifts.

8 pages, 10 figures, accepted in MNRAS

References in corpus (5)

• Optical Spectroscopy of the Large Kuiper Belt Objects 136472 (2005 FY9) and 136108 (2003 EL61)
• On the size, shape, and density of dwarf planet Makemake
• Absorption Coefficients of the Methane-Nitrogen Binary Ice System: Implications for Pluto
• Rotationally resolved spectroscopy of dwarf planet (136472) Makemake
• Long-term photometric monitoring of the dwarf planet (136472) Makemake