J/A+A/693/A66 Asteroid rotation periods from TESS (Vavilov+, 2025)
Rotation periods of asteroids from light curves of TESS data
Vavilov D., Carry B.
<Astron. Astrophys. 693, A66 (2025)>
=2025A&A...693A..66V 2025A&A...693A..66V (SIMBAD/NED BibCode)
ADC_Keywords: Solar system ; Minor planets ; Optical
Keywords: methods: data analysis - astronomical databases: miscellaneous -
minor planets, asteroids: general -
Abstract:
The understanding of the dynamical evolution of asteroids through the
secular Yarkovsky effect requires the determination of many physical
properties, including the rotation period. We aim at proposing a
method for robust determination of the rotation period of asteroids,
avoiding pitfalls of alias, and apply it to thousands of asteroid
light curves measured by the NASA TESS mission. We develop a robust
period-analysis algorithm, based on Fourier series. Our approach
includes a comparison of the results from multiple orders and tests on
the number of extremes to identify and reject potential aliases. We
also provide the uncertainty interval for the result as well as
additional possible periods. We report the rotation period for 4521
asteroids more precise than 10%. A comparison with the literature
(whenever avail- able) reveals very good agreement and validates the
approach presented here. Our approach also highlights cases for which
the determination of the period should be considered invalid. The
dataset presented here confirms the apparent small number of asteroids
with a rotation between 50 and 100h, correlated with diameter. The
amplitude of the light curves is found to increase toward smaller
diameters, as asteroids become less and less spherical. Finally, there
is a systematic difference between the broad C and S complex in the
amplitude- period, revealing the statistically lower density of C
types compared to S type asteroids. Our approach to the determination
of asteroid rotation period is based on simple concepts yet robust and
can be applied to large corpora of time serie photometry, such as
those extracted from exoplanet transit surveys.
Description:
We present a new approach of determining the rotational period
of asteroids from optical light curves.
This approach was used to compute the rotational periods
of asteroids observed by Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)
reported by Pal et al. (2020ApJS..247...26P 2020ApJS..247...26P). This dataset has
observations of 9912 asteroids. We determined the period of 4521
asteroids with an accuracy better than 10%.
These files contain all the parameters for each SSO studied in the
present article. The format is self-explaining, with each numerical
value being preceded by a plain-English description.
File Summary:
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FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ReadMe 80 . This file
tess.dat 590 9912 Asteroid rotation periods from TESS
per_object/* . 9912 Individual files with light curve data
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Byte-by-byte Description of file: tess.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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1- 14 A14 --- FileName Name of the file with light curve data
in subdirectory per_object
16- 21 I6 --- MPC ? IAU number of the asteroid (sso_number)
23- 38 A16 --- Name IAU name/designation of the asteroid
(sso_name)
40- 52 F13.9 h Per Synodic rotation period (period)
54- 68 F15.9 h b_Per Lower bound on rotation period
(errperioddown)
70- 82 F13.9 h B_Per Upper bound on rotation period
(errperiodup)
84-108 F25.20 h e_Per Error on rotation period (err_period)
110-130 E21.16 --- sigmaValue Significance parameter sigma
(sigma_value)
132-152 E21.16 --- sigmaThreshold Threshold of acceptance for sigma
(sigma_threshold)
154-155 I2 --- NFS Order of the Fourier Series (n_FS)
157-160 I4 --- Nobs Total number of observations (n_obs)
162-164 I3 --- Nrejected Number of rejected observations
(n_rejected)
166-169 I4 --- Nvalid Number of observations used in the fit
(n_valid)
171-187 F17.14 mag magmean Mean magnitude (mumag)
189-210 F22.18 --- phasec1 First coefficient of the phase function
(phase_c1)
212-235 F24.19 --- phasec2 Second coefficient of the phase function
(phase_c2)
237-255 F19.17 --- p2p Peak-to-peak amplitude of the lightcurve
(p2p)
257-590 A334 --- PerOthers List of other possible periods
(period_others)
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Acknowledgements:
Benoit Carry, benoit.carry(at)oca.eu
(End) Patricia Vannier [CDS] 24-Sep-2024