Re-determination of Phoebe's orbit

¹ National Time Service Center, The Chinese Academy of Science, PO Box 18, Lintong, Shaanxi 710600, PR China e-mail: shenkx@ntsc.ac.cn
² United Laboratory for Optical Astrometry, The Chinese Academy of Science, PR China
³ Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge CB10 1SA, UK
⁴ Observatoire Aquitain des Sciences de l'Univers, UMR 5804 Laboratoire d'Astrodynamique, d'Astrophysique et d'Aéronomie de Bordeaux (L3AB), 2 rue de l'Observatoire, 33270 Floirac, France

Received: 20 January 2005
Accepted: 10 March 2005

Abstract

In order to improve the orbit of Phoebe, the ninth satellite of the Saturnian system, 101 new observations were made by our research team in 2003, using a CCD detector of large size ( pixels) mounted on the 1.56 m astrometric reflector at the Sheshan Station of Shanghai Astronomical Observatory. We fitted a numerical integration of its orbit to all of the collected Earth-based astrometric observations from 1904 to 2003, including the newest precise data sets from Qiao & Tang and from Peng et al. A new set of initial conditions of Phoebe has been obtained, leading to an improved orbit of this satellite.