Size and Shape Constraints of (486958) Arrokoth from Stellar Occultations
Creators: name: Buie, Marc W.
name: Porter, Simon B.
name: Tamblyn, Peter
name: Terrell, Dirk
name: Parker, Alex Harrison
name: Baratoux, David
name: Kaire, Maram
name: Leiva, Rodrigo
name: Verbiscer, Anne J.
name: Zangari, Amanda M.
name: Colas, François
name: Diop, Baïdy Demba
name: Samaniego, Joseph I.
name: Wasserman, Lawrence H.
name: Benecchi, Susan D.
name: Caspi, Amir
name: Gwyn, Stephen
name: Kavelaars, J. J.
name: Uría, Adriana C. Ocampo
name: Rabassa, Jorge
name: Skrutskie, M. F.
name: Soto, Alejandro
name: Tanga, Paolo
name: Young, Eliot F.
name: Stern, S. Alan
name: Andersen, Bridget C.
name: Pérez, Mauricio E. Arango
name: Arredondo, Anicia
name: Artola, Rodolfo Alfredo
name: Bâ, Abdoulaye
name: Ballet, Romuald
name: Blank, Ted
name: Bop, Cheikh Tidiane
name: Bosh, Amanda S.
name: López, Matías Aarón Camino
name: Carter, Christian M.
name: Castro-Chacón, J. H.
name: Desprez, Alfonso Caycedo
name: Guerra, Nicolás Caycedo
name: Conard, Steven J.
name: Dauvergne, Jean-Luc
name: Dean, Bryan
name: Dean, Michelle
name: Desmars, Josselin
name: Dieng, Abdou Lahat
name: Dieng, Mame Diarra Bousso
name: Diouf, Omar
name: Dorego, Gualbert Séraphin
name: Dunham, David W.
name: Dunham, Joan
name: Luca, Hugo A. Durantini
name: Edwards, Patrick
name: Erasmus, Nicolas
name: Faye, Gayane
name: Faye, Mactar
name: Ferrario, Lucas Ezequiel
name: Ferrell, Chelsea L.
name: Finley, Tiffany J.
name: Fraser, Wesley C.
name: Friedli, Alison J.
name: Serna, Julián Galvez
name: Garcia-Migani, Esteban A.
name: Genade, Anja
name: Getrost, Kai
name: Gil-Hutton, Ricardo A.
name: Gimeno, German N.
name: Golub, Eli Joseph
name: Murillo, Giovanni Francisco González
name: Grusin, Michael D.
name: Gurovich, Sebastian
name: Hanna, William H.
name: Henn, Santiago M.
name: Hinton, P. C.
name: Hughes, Paul J.
name: Josephs, John David
name: Joya, Raul
name: Kammer, Joshua A.
name: Keeney, Brian A.
name: Keller, John M.
name: Kramer, Emily A.
name: Levine, Stephen E.
name: Lisse, Carey M.
name: Lovell, Amy J.
name: Mackie, Jason A.
name: Makarchuk, Stanislav
name: Manzano, Luis E.
name: Mbaye, Salma Sylla
name: Mbaye, Modou
name: Melia, Raul Roberto
name: Moreno, Freddy
name: Moss, Sean K.
name: Ndaiye, Diene
name: Ndiaye, Mapathe
name: Nelson, Matthew J.
name: Olkin, Catherine B.
name: Olsen, Aart M.
name: Moreno, Victor Jonathan Ospina
name: Pasachoff, Jay M.
name: Pereyra, Mariana Belen
name: Person, Michael J.
name: Pinzón, Giovanni
name: Pulver, Eduardo Alejandro
name: Quintero, Edwin A.
name: Regester, Jeffrey R.
name: Resnick, Aaron Caleb
name: Reyes-Ruiz, Mauricio
name: Rolfsmeier, Alex D.
name: Ruhland, Trina R.
name: Salmon, Julien
name: Santos-Sanz, Pablo
name: Santucho, Marcos Ariel
name: Niño, Diana Karina Sepúlveda
name: Sickafoose, Amanda A.
name: Silva, José S.
name: Singer, Kelsi N.
name: Skipper, Joy N.
name: Slivan, Stephen M.
name: Smith, Rose J. C.
name: Spagnotto, Julio C.
name: Stephens, Andrew W.
name: Strabala, Samuel D.
name: Tamayo, Francisco J.
name: Throop, Henry B.
name: Cañas, Andrés David Torres
name: Toure, Labaly
name: Traore, Alassane
name: Tsang, Constantine C. C.
name: Turner, Jake D.
name: Vanegas, Santiago
name: Venable, Roger
name: Wilson, John C.
name: Zuluaga, Carlos A.
name: Zuluaga, Jorge I.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
subject: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We present the results from four stellar occultations by (486958) Arrokoth, the flyby target of the New Horizons extended mission. Three of the four efforts led to positive detections of the body, and all constrained the presence of rings and other debris, finding none. Twenty-five mobile stations were deployed for 2017 June 3 and augmented by fixed telescopes. There were no positive detections from this effort. The event on 2017 July 10 was observed by SOFIA with one very short chord. Twenty-four deployed stations on 2017 July 17 resulted in five chords that clearly showed a complicated shape consistent with a contact binary with rough dimensions of 20 by 30 km for the overall outline. A visible albedo of 10% was derived from these data. Twenty-two systems were deployed for the fourth event on 2018 Aug 4 and resulted in two chords. The combination of the occultation data and the flyby results provides a significant refinement of the rotation period, now estimated to be 15.9380 $\pm$ 0.0005 hours. The occultation data also provided high-precision astrometric constraints on the position of the object that were crucial for supporting the navigation for the New Horizons flyby. This work demonstrates an effective method for obtaining detailed size and shape information and probing for rings and dust on distant Kuiper Belt objects as well as being an important source of positional data that can aid in spacecraft navigation that is particularly useful for small and distant bodies.
description: Submitted to Astronomical Journal (revised); 40 pages, 13 figures, 9 tables