Today was published new preprint about study of Quaoar-Weywot Kuiper belt binary.

Authors of this work is Wesley Fraser, Michael Brown from California Institute of Technology.

They report about WFPC2 observations of the Quaoar-Weywot system with WFPC2 of Hubble space telescope. From these observations they find that Weywot is on an elliptical orbit with eccentricity of e = 0.14±0.04, period of T = 12.438 ± 0.005 days. Scientist find, new estimated size, a diameter for Quaoar of D = 890±70 km and density to be ? = 4.2±1.3 g/cm³ – possibly the highest density in the Kuiper belt. This fact may indicate what Quaoar have collisionally origin, or what this object may formed more closely to the Sun.

http://arxiv.org

The astrometrical measurements of fragment b of C/2007 Q3, taken on Tzec Maun and Tenagra II observatories, officially published by MPC in MPEC 2010-F87 circular.

The existence of second fragment is not confirmed at this time.

When I seen information about spliting C/2007 Q3 nucleus, I tried to shot this event. Fragment is clearly visible on images taken on Tzec Maun and Tenagra II observatories on March 23 and 25. After processing stacked images I measure position of splited body. This object offset from parent body on 6? PA 245°. All inforamtion sended to CBAT.

Tommorow I received information about testing new TCS. We have good progress in this work and expect to see “first light” in a couple of weeks.

Our site was started in the testing mode.