CCD observations of Nereid and a new orbital determination ^*,**

¹ Observatório Nacional, Rua Gal. José Cristino 77, 20921-400 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
² Institut de Mécanique Céleste et de Calcul des Éphémérides, 77 avenue Denfert-Rochereau F-75014 Paris, France

Received: 14 September 1998
Accepted: 8 January 1999

Abstract

229 CCD positions of Nereid taken between 1993 and 1998 are presented. Many of the observations were taken near the periapsis. Considering also the other published positions we have a good distribution of the observations on the eccentric orbit of the satellite. Using a numeric integration method we fitted all these observations in order to determine one state vector for the orbit. The observed minus calculated standard deviation for all observations is 023, and for our observations it is 016.