Exploring the Dynamics of Quaoar's Rings

Recent stellar occultations have revealed a pair of enigmatic rings around the dwarf planet Quaoar. These narrow rings, which lie well outside Quaoar's Roche limit are extremely interesting targets for study into ring formation, evolution, and ring particle interactions. Quaoar and its moon Weywot, are, unfortunately, not well enough characterized to study the dynamics of the newly discovered ring system. In this 5 orbit program, we propose to study the orbit of Weywot to constrain the dynamics of Quaoar's rings. By using state-of-the-art non-Keplerian orbit fitting techniques, the additional astrometric observations obtained in this program will strongly constrain Weywot's orbit and orbital precession, as well as Quaoar's mass and shape. This will enable further study of Quaoar's rings, allowing the system to act as a touchstone for future studies of rings around TNOs. Our proposal uses a novel observing strategy to ensure the most efficient use of HST time, while still allowing us to accomplish our goals.