Rotation Studies of Jovian Trojan Asteroids
Abstract
The Jovian Trojan asteroids appear to be fundamentally different from main belt asteroids. They formed further from the sun, they are of different composition, and their collisional history is different. Lightcurve studies provide information about the distribution of rotation frequencies of a group of asteroids. For main belt asteroids larger than about 40 km in diameter, the distribution of rotation frequencies is Maxwellian (Pravec et al. 2000). This suggests that collisions determine their rotation properties. Smaller main belt asteroids, however, show a predominance of both fast and slow rotators, with the observed spin distribution apparently controlled by the Yarkovsky-O'Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack (YORP) effect (Pravec et al. 2008). The Trojans larger than 100 km in diameter have been almost completely sampled, but lightcurves for smaller Trojans have been less well studied due to their low albedos and greater solar distances. We propose to investigate the rotation periods of 4-6 small (D < 50 km) Trojan asteroids and 6-9 Trojans in the 50-100 km size range.
- Publication:
-
NOAO Proposal
- Pub Date:
- August 2011
- Bibcode:
- 2011noao.prop..495F