Fast Rotating Asteroids 1999 TY2, 1999 SF10, and 1998 WB2
✍ Scribed by Petr Pravec; Carl Hergenrother; Rob Whiteley; Lenka Šarounová; Peter Kušnirák; Marek Wolf
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 2000
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 112 KB
- Volume
- 147
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0019-1035
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
An analysis of our photometric observations of near-Earth asteroids 1999 TY 2 , 1999 SF 10 , and 1998 WB 2 has revealed their rotation periods to be 7.2807 ± 0.0003, 2.4663 ± 0.0005, and 18.8 ± 0.3 min, respectively. Their rotations are so fast that the bodies cannot be held together by self-gravitation alone, and must therefore be monoliths. Their absolute magnitudes, 23.1 ± 0.3, 24.0 ± 0.5, and 22.1 ± 0.2, respectively, indicate that they are small bodies with mean diameters in the range 60-120 m. The current statistics of asteroid spin rates vs size suggest that the range where monoliths start to dominate among asteroids is below a diameter of about 200 m, corresponding to H ≈ 22, as suggested by P. Pravec and A. W. Harris (2000, Icarus, in press).