No satellites detected around 21 Lutetia

Kulkarni, Shrinivas R.; Busch, Michael W.; Conrad, Al

United States

Abstract

The Asteroid 21 Lutetia is the target of a flyby by the Rosetta spacecraft in mid-2010. We observed Lutetia with the Keck adaptive-optics system, and searched for satellites. We find none, to a flux limit of 1/350 (Δ-mag = 6.4), corresponding to a size limit of roughly 6 km, at a separation of 0.15″ (3 primary radii or 0.006 Hill radii).

2009 Icarus
Rosetta 4