Title
The tumbling spin state of (99942) Apophis
Date Issued
01 May 2014
Access level
metadata only access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Pravec P.
Scheirich P.
Ďurech J.
Pollock J.
Kušnirák P.
Hornoch K.
Galád A.
Vokrouhlický D.
Harris A.W.
Jehin E.
Manfroid J.
Opitom C.
Gillon M.
Oey J.
Vraštil J.
Reichart D.
Ivarsen K.
Haislip J.
LaCluyze A.
IMCCE-CNRS-Observatoire de Paris
Publisher(s)
Elsevier
Abstract
Our photometric observations of Asteroid (99942) Apophis from December 2012 to April 2013 revealed it to be in a state of non-principal axis rotation (tumbling). We constructed its spin and shape model and found that it is in a moderately excited Short Axis Mode (SAM) state with a ratio of the rotational kinetic energy to the basic spin state energy E/E0=1.024±0.013. (All quoted uncertainties correspond to 3σ.) The greatest and intermediate principal moments of inertia are nearly the same with I2/I3=0.965-0.015+0.009, but the smallest principal moment of inertia is substantially lower with I1/I3=0.61-0.08+0.11; the asteroid's dynamically equivalent ellipsoid is close to a prolate ellipsoid. The precession and rotation periods are Pφ=27.38±0.07h and Pψ=263±6h, respectively; the strongest observed lightcurve amplitude for the SAM case is in the 2nd harmonic of P1=Pφ-1-Pψ-1-1=30.56±0.01h. The rotation is retrograde with the angular momentum vector's ecliptic longitude and latitude of 250° and -75° (the uncertainty area is approximately an ellipse with the major and minor semiaxes of 27° and 14°, respectively). An implication of the retrograde rotation is a somewhat increased probability of the Apophis' impact in 2068, but it is still very small with the risk level on the Palermo Scale remaining well below zero. Apophis is a member of the population of slowly tumbling asteroids. Applying the theory of asteroid nutational damping by Breiter et al. (Breiter, S., Rożek, A., Vokrouhlický, D. [2012]. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 427, 755-769), we found that slowly tumbling asteroids predominate in the spin rate-size range where their estimated damping times are greater than about 0.2. Gyr. The appearance that the PA/NPA rotators transition line seems to follow a line of constant damping time may be because there are two or more asteroid spin evolution mechanisms in play, or the factor of μQ (the elastic modulus times the quality factor) is not constant but it may decrease with decreasing asteroid size, which would oppose the trend due to decreasing collisional age or excitation time. © 2014 Elsevier Inc.
Start page
48
End page
60
Volume
233
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Astronomía
Subjects
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-84894229997
Source
Icarus
ISSN of the container
00191035, 10902643
Sponsor(s)
The work at Ondřejov and the Charles University Prague was supported by the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, Grants P209/12/0229 and 209/10/0537, and by the Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic, Grant LG12001. A.G. was supported by the Slovak Grant Agency for Science VEGA, Grant 1/0670/13. A.W.H. was supported through the NEO Observations program of NASA, Grant NNX13AP56G. Support for PROMPT has been provided by the National Science Foundation under awards CAREER-0449001, AAG-0707634, and MRI-0836187. TRAPPIST is a project funded by the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique, F.R.S FNRS) under grant FRFC 2.5.594.09.F, with the participation of the Swiss National Science Fundation (SNF). E.J. and M.G. are FNRS Research Associates, J.M. is Research Director FNRS. C.O. thanks the Belgian FNRS for funding her PhD thesis. Based on data collected with the Danish 1.54-m telescope at the ESO La Silla Observatory within the NEOSource project.
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