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THE 3rd WORKSHOP ON BINARIES IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM

Our workshop will begin just a few days after the 35th anniversary of the discovery of Charon around Pluto, and two months short of the 20th anniversary of the discovery of the first binary asteroid (other than Pluto/Charon), when the Galileo spacecraft captured pictures of Dactyl, a small moon of (243) Ida. Today, Pluto is known to have 5 moons, and more than 220 binary and multiple minor-planet systems have been discovered, spanning most of the dynamical populations in the Solar System.

The goal of the workshop is to bring together various ideas on the detection, characterization, formation, and implications of binary and multiple objects among the NEO, main-belt, Trojan, Centaur, TNO populations.

Discussions can be expected to include all of the many modes of observation, in all of the dynamical populations, as well as theory and numerical modeling. Contributions regarding the realm of giant-impact modeling (Pluto/Charon, Earth/Moon, as an end-member of the modeling of binary production) are also welcome.

This Workshop is the 3rd in a series that included the 1st Workshop in Steamboat Springs, Colorado in August 2007 and the 2nd Workshop in Poznan, Poland in July 2010. Both of those workshops were characterized by a relaxed atmosphere and free format, with almost as much time for discussion as for the presentations themselves.

Binaries-3 will take place over 2.5 days (June 30 – July 2, 2013), and will be held at the Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel on the Kohala Coast of Hawai’i, the Big Island. To maintain the small
meeting atmosphere that has made the previous Binary workshops successful, the number of participants will be capped at about 50. There will be 5 half-day sessions.

We will organize optional field trips to the summit of Mauna Kea, one of the best astronomical observing sites in the world, and to Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, where the Kilauea volcano has been continuously active since 1983. Just prior to, and in coordination with, our workshop, the 8th Workshop on Catastrophic Disruption in the Solar System (CD8) will take place at the Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel over June 23 – 27, 2013.