[en] | (523764) 2014 WC510

The Pan-STARRS survey is conducted by one of the two 1.8-meter Ritchey–Chrétien telescopes (named Pan-STARRS 1 and 2) at the Haleakalā Observatory atop the Hawaiian island of Maui. 2014 WC₅₁₀ was first observed by Pan-STARRS 1 on 8 September 2011,^[1] but was not recognized as a new object until 20 November 2014.^[5] After Pan-STARRS 1 made further observations of the object, the Minor Planet Center announced 2014 WC₅₁₀ as a newly-discovered minor planet on 17 July 2016.^[5] The minor planet provisional designation given to the object, 2014 WC₅₁₀, does not necessarily reflect its discovery date but is rather derived from the date of observation on which the object was first recognized.^[6] The observers operating the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in these observations were B. Gibson, T. Goggia, N. Primak, A. Schultz, and M. Willman.^[5] After 2014 WC₅₁₀ was observed long enough to secure its orbit, the Minor Planet Center gave it the permanent minor planet number 523764 on 25 September 2018 and declared the object’s official discovery date as 8 September 2011,^[7] in accordance with the Minor Planet Center’s discovery rules.^[6]

On 1 December 2018, 2014 WC₅₁₀ occulted a 15th-magnitude double star, blocking out its starlight for a maximum duration of approximately 11 seconds. The stellar occultation was observed by astronomers and citizen scientists across the West Coast of the United States and Canada. Of the 41 participating sites, six of them reported dimming in the star’s brightness, signifying likely positive detections of the occultation. Five of these sites reported two consecutive dimmings due to the occulted star’s double nature; 2014 WC₅₁₀ occulted one of the two stars being observed.^[4] These observations were part of a campaign coordinated by the Research and Education Collaborative Occultation Network (RECON), a citizen science project dedicated to observing occultations by trans-Neptunian objects.^[8][9]

Prior to the occultation, 2014 WC₅₁₀ had only been observed by Pan-STARRS over an observation arc of 3 years. The calculated orbit from these Pan-STARRS observations had significant uncertainty, which would have been unreliable for predicting occultations.^[5] In an effort to reduce the orbital uncertainty, the RECON project collaborated with the Pan-STARRS project to do a precovery search of archival Pan-STARRS images to gather extensive astrometric positions of 2014 WC₅₁₀.^[4] Follow-up observations by Pan-STARRS were also conducted through 2016–2018 and helped extend 2014 WC₅₁₀‘s observation arc to 6.3 years.^[1] Although an observation arc of this length is generally unreliable for predicting occultations especially by distant objects, this was compensated by Pan-STARRS’s highly accurate astrometry, allowing for 2014 WC₅₁₀‘s orbital uncertainty to be significantly reduced.^[4]

Like Pluto, 2014 WC₅₁₀‘s orbit is elongated and inclined to the ecliptic.^[10] 2014 WC₅₁₀ has an orbital eccentricity of 0.25 and an orbital inclination of 19.5 degrees with respect to the ecliptic. Over the course of its orbit, 2014 WC₅₁₀‘s distance from the Sun varies from 29.5 AU at perihelion (closest distance) to 48.9 AU at aphelion (farthest distance).^[3] 2014 WC₅₁₀ has last passed aphelion in the early 20th century, and is now moving closer to the Sun, approaching perihelion by 2032.^[3][11] Simulations by the Deep Ecliptic Survey show that 2014 WC₅₁₀ can acquire a perihelion distance (q_min) as small as 28.7 AU over the next 10 million years.^[2]

Since the two components were only observed for a short period of time during the occultation, the binary system’s orbital parameters have not been determined. The projected separation distance between the primary and secondary during the occultation was 349 ± 29 km (217 ± 18 mi), derived from an angular separation of 16±1 milliarcseconds (mas).^[4] This small projected separation distance initially led researchers to believe that 2014 WC₅₁₀ is a compact binary system,^[4] but high-resolution imaging by the Hubble Space Telescope on 6 March 2024 revealed that 2014 WC₅₁₀‘s components are more widely separated from each other by at least 2,600 km (1,600 mi) (angular separation 120 mas).^[12][a] The large change in projected separation distance between the occultation and Hubble observations suggests that the 2014 WC₅₁₀ system was in or near an edge-on configuration, in which the components of the 2014 WC₅₁₀ system may have transited or occulted each other from Earth.^[12]

Most models of the formation of the Solar System indicate that most TNOs have formed as binaries, hence they are expected to be common especially in the Kuiper belt population.^[9] While most known binary TNOs appear to have wide mutual orbits, tight binary TNOs are thought to have a higher chance of survival after their formation. 2014 WC₅₁₀ belongs to the population of smaller TNOs, which are expected to have a primordial origin similar to the classical Kuiper belt object 486958 Arrokoth.^[4]

Given the components’ estimated diameters and their combined absolute magnitude of 7.2, their calculated geometric albedos indicate that they have dark surfaces, reflecting about 5% of incident visible light. However, the estimated geometric albedo may be subject to a systematic error depending on the true shapes and photometric properties of the components, resulting in a significant uncertainty of ±2%. Nonetheless, 2014 WC₅₁₀ is one of the darkest objects measured with stellar occultations, being darker than 486958 Arrokoth.^[4]

• SwRI study describes discovery of close binary trans-Neptunian object, 28 September 2020, Southwest Research Institute
• A stellar occultation by a small plutino with RECON, Rodrigo Leiva et al., September 2019, Europlanet Science Congress–Division for Planetary Sciences Joint Meeting 2019
• Tight and contact TNO binaries with stellar occultations^{[permanent dead link]}, Marc W. Buie et al., 2019
• (523764) 2014 WC510, Wm. Robert Johnston, Asteroids with Satellites Database—Johnston’s Archive, 11 October 2020
• (523764) 2014 WC510 at the JPL Small-Body Database
  • Close approach · Discovery · Ephemeris · Orbit diagram · Orbital elements · Physical parameters