J/ApJS/245/29 Main-belt asteroid photometry from TESS (McNeill+, 2019)
Asteroid photometry from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite: a pilot
study.
McNeill A., Mommert M., Trilling D.E., Llama J., Skiff B.
<Astrophys. J. Suppl. Ser., 245, 29 (2019)>
=2019ApJS..245...29M 2019ApJS..245...29M
ADC_Keywords: Minor planets; Photometry
Keywords: Asteroids ; Main belt asteroids
Abstract:
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) searches for planets
transiting bright and nearby stars using high-cadence, large-scale
photometric observations. Full frame images provided by the TESS
mission include a large number of serendipitously observed main-belt
asteroids (MBAs). Due to the cadence of the published full frame
images, we are sensitive to periods as long as of order tens of days,
a region of phase space that is generally not accessible through
traditional observing. This work represents a much less biased
measurement of the period distribution in this period range. We have
derived rotation periods for 300 MBAs and have partial lightcurves for
a further 7277 asteroids, including 43 with periods of P>100hr; this
large number of slow rotators is predicted by theory. Of these slow
rotators we find none requiring significant internal strength to
resist rotational reshaping. We find our derived rotation periods to
be in excellent agreement with results in the Lightcurve Database for
the 55 targets that overlap. Over the nominal two-year lifetime of the
mission, we expect the detection of around 85,000 unique asteroids
with rotation period solutions for around 6000 asteroids. We project
that the systematic analysis of the entire TESS data set will increase
the number of known slow-rotating asteroids (period >100hr) by a
factor of 10. Comparing our new period determinations with previous
measurements in the literature, we find that the rotation period of
asteroid (2320) Blarney has decreased by at least 20% over the past
decade, potentially due to surface activity or subcatastrophic
collisions.
Description:
We downloaded the publicly available calibrated full frame images of
the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) sectors 1 and 2 using
the bulk download services provided as the Barbara A. Mikulski Archive
for Space Telescopes (MAST). From this 54 day coverage, we have
derived rotation periods for 300 main-belt objects.
File Summary:
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FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
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ReadMe 80 . This file
table1.dat 45 300 Summary table of rotational information derived
from pilot-study TESS observations
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See also:
B/astorb : Orbits of Minor Planets (Bowell+, 2014)
IV/38 : TESS Input Catalog - v8.0 (TIC-8) (Stassun+, 2019)
J/A+A/498/313 : Photometry of 3 main belt asteroids (Marciniak+, 2009)
J/A+A/508/1503 : Photometry of 3 main belt asteroids (Marciniak+, 2009)
J/A+A/529/A107 : Photometry of 4 main belt asteroids (Marciniak+, 2011)
J/ApJ/741/68 : Main Belt asteroids with WISE/NEOWISE. I. (Masiero+, 2011)
J/A+A/529/A86 : Polarimetric survey of main-belt asteroids (Gil-Hutton+, 2011)
J/PASJ/63/1117 : Asteroid catalog using AKARI (AcuA). V1. (Usui+, 2011)
J/ApJ/759/L8 : WISE/NEOWISE obs. of main belt asteroids (Masiero+, 2012)
J/A+A/545/A131 : Photometry of 8 main belt asteroids (Marciniak+, 2012)
J/ApJ/770/7 : WISE/NEOWISE MBAs: family members (Masiero+, 2013)
J/ApJ/791/121 : NIR albedos of main-belt asteroids (Masiero+, 2014)
J/A+A/578/A42 : Main Belt asteroids observed by Spitzer (Ryan+, 2015)
J/A+A/596/A40 : Main-belt asteroids optical light curves (Szabo+, 2016)
J/AJ/152/54 : Spectroscopy of main-belt asteroids (Vernazza+, 2016)
J/A+A/607/A103 : Main-belt asteroids polarimetry. VI. (Gil-Hutton+, 2017)
J/AJ/156/139 : MBA shape distributions from Gaia DR2 (Mommert+, 2018)
J/ApJS/234/37 : R-band K2 photometry of main-belt asteroids (Molnar+, 2018)
J/ApJS/237/19 : KMTNet LCs of ∼1000 main-belt asteroids (Erasmus+, 2018)
J/A+A/626/A42 : Polarimetry of Main-Belt Asteroids (Lopez-Sisterna+, 2019)
J/AJ/159/25 : PS1 LCs and rotation periods of new asteroids (Lo+, 2020)
http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/tess/ : TESS science support center
http://archive.stsci.edu/tess/bulk_downloads/bulk_downloads_ffi-tp-lc-dv.html :
TESS Full Frame image downloads on MAST
Byte-by-byte Description of file: table1.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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1- 6 I6 --- ID [70/413098] Object in pilot-study
TESS observations
8- 12 F5.2 mag H [6.5/18] Absolute visual magnitude
14- 16 I3 h Cov [36/668] Coverage of observations
18- 24 F7.3 h Per [0.5/538] Rotational period
26- 30 F5.3 h e_Per [0.001/6.8] Uncertainty in Per
32- 35 F4.2 --- Sig [0.4/1] Normalized Peak Signal (1)
37- 40 F4.2 mag Amp [0.08/1.9] Light curve amplitude
42- 45 F4.2 mag e_Amp [0.02/0.7] Uncertainty in Amp
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Note (1): Normalized peak signal is the peak periodogram value when the full
data set is analyzed, i.e., no additional cropping or sigma-clipping.
(Uncertainties included here are provisional and should be considered
to be conservative; full uncertainties and further information will be
included in a subsequent database release.)
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History:
From electronic version of the journal
(End) Prepared by [AAS], Emmanuelle Perret [CDS] 01-Apr-2020