A Herschel-PACS view of 16 Centaurs

The goal of this work is to characterize a set of Centaurs in terms of their size, albedo, and thermal properties. The Herschel open time key program "TNOs are Cool!'' observed 130 Centaurs and TNOs in 2009-2012. In this particular work we use Herschel/PACS three-band photometry to obtain monochromatic flux densities at 70, 100 and 160 μm. Additionally, we also incorporate Spitzer/MIPS flux densities at 24 and 70 μm when available. We use a consistent method for data reduction and aperture photometry to finally determine sizes and albedos of 16 Centaurs using radiometric techniques. We study the correlations between the size and albedo resulting from our models and other physical (i.e spectral slope) and orbital parameters using a more extended sample (obtained from literature). The final sample comprises 36 objects: 18 Centaurs observed with Herschel/PACS; 10 observed only with Spitzer and 8 SDOs. The first conclusion is that the albedo of the Centaurs is not determined by their orbit. Similarly we do not find any correlation between diameter and orbital parameters. We also find that most of the objects in our sample are dark (pv <7%) and most of them are small (D <120km). However, we do not find any correlation between albedo and diameter, in particular for the group of the small objects we can find albedo values homogeneously distributed from 4 - 15%. When it comes to correlation with the color of the objects, we find that the red objects are all small (mean diameter 65 km), while the gray ones are either small or large (mean diameter 120 km). Also, the gray objects seem to be darker, with a mean value of 5.6%, while for the red objects the albedo can vary from 5 to 15%, with a mean value of 8.5%. All of this shows that there are other physical properties (size and albedo distribution) that make differences between the gray and red objects, even if we do not yet have a physical explanation for the origin of this bimodality