THE ORBITS OF THE NEPTUNIAN SATELLITES AND THE ORIENTATION OF THE POLE OF NEPTUNE

This paper reports on an update to the orientation of Neptune's pole and to the orbits of the Neptunian satellites, Triton, Nereid, and Proteus. We determined the new pole and orbits in the International Celestial Reference Frame by fitting them to all available observations through the opposition of 2008. The new data in the fit are high-quality modern astrometry and constitute a 19 year extension of the previous data arc. We assess the accuracy of the orbits and compare them with our earlier orbits. We also provide mean elements as a geometrical description for the orbits.