THREE ADDITIONAL CANDIDATES FOR THE GROUP OF VERY WIDE BINARY ASTEROIDS.

Abstract

The very wide binary asteroids (VWBA) are a subgroup of binary asteroids that exhibit very long primary periods and, mostly, short secondary periods that are similar to those of the primary of "normal" small binary asteroids. It is unlikely that confirming mutual events will be seen by photometric observations, mostly because the orbital periods of the assumed satellites will be on the order of days. This paper introduces three additional candidates for this subgroup: (215442) 2002 MQ3, 2009 EC, and 2016 BU13. All three are considered to be among the more convincing examples that such systems exist.