J/A+A/703/A302 Asteroids rotation periods from Kepler K2 (Sergeyev+, 2025)
Rotation periods of asteroids serendipitously observed by
NASA/Kepler K2 mission.
Sergeyev A.V., Carry B., Eggl S., Berthier J., Santerne A., Vachier F.,
Shevchenko V.G.
<Astron. Astrophys. 703, A302 (2025)>
=2025A&A...703A.302S 2025A&A...703A.302S (SIMBAD/NED BibCode)
ADC_Keywords: Solar system ; Minor planets ; Photometry ; Space observations
Keywords: methods: data analysis - techniques: photometric - surveys -
minor planets, asteroids: general
Abstract:
Understanding the rotational periods of asteroids is crucial for
gaining insights into their internal structures, compositions, and
collisional histories. NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, during its K2
extension (2014-2018), serendipitously observed numerous asteroids
while surveying the ecliptic plane, providing a unique photometric
dataset.
By analyzing photometric data from the K2 mission, we aimed to
determine the rotational periods of asteroids that crossed Kepler's
field of view, focusing on objects with an apparent magnitude of 19 or
brighter that appeared in the Kepler target pixel files at least ten
times.
We developed an algorithm to identify asteroid crossings in the Kepler
data and extract photometric light curves. The Lomb-Scargle
periodogram method was employed to determine the rotational periods
from the extracted light curves due to its robustness in handling
unevenly sampled data. Noise and systematic errors were mitigated
through photometric corrections using co-trending basis vectors.
We extracted and analyzed 4596 light curves from 2418 asteroids
observed during the Kepler/K2 mission. This allowed us to compute
rotation periods for 559 asteroids. We found that 375 of these
asteroids had previously known periods. The rotation periods
determined for 295 of the asteroids in this study agree with existing
asteroid rotation periods from the literature, validating our
approach. We report new rotation periods and their light curve
amplitudes for 184 asteroids, expanding the catalog of known asteroid
rotation periods.
The analysis of rotation periods from the Kepler K2 mission data has
provided valuable insights into the physical characteristics of
main-belt asteroids. Our results are consistent with existing data and
expand the catalog of known asteroid rotation periods. These findings
contribute to our understanding of asteroid dynamics and will aid
future research in planetary science and asteroid exploration.
Description:
We present rotation periods and light-curve amplitudes for 559
asteroids serendipitously observed by the NASA/Kepler K2 mission.
Asteroid crossings were identified in Kepler Target Pixel Files
(TPFs), light curves were extracted by summing the full TPF and
corrected using Kepler Cotrending Basis Vectors. Rotation periods were
derived with a Generalized Lomb-Scargle periodogram. We required at
least 10 observations per object in a campaign, Kp≤19, a false alarm
probability (FAP)<0.05 and a relative period uncertainty <20%. Of
these, 375 periods were previously published and 184 are new
determinations.
This catalogue lists the rotation period, amplitude and related
metadata for each asteroid of the Kepler-period sample. Periods lie in
the range 2.39-36.93h; amplitudes in 0.016-1.086mag; the dynamical
class and taxonomy are compiled from external sources where available.
File Summary:
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FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
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ReadMe 80 . This file
kepler.dat 78 559 Catalogue of rotation periods for 559 asteroids
serendipitously observed by NASA/Kepler
during the K2 mission
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See also:
B/astorb : Orbits of Minor Planets (Bowell+, 2014-)
Byte-by-byte Description of file: kepler.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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1- 16 A16 --- Name Asteroid name or provisional designation
18- 23 I6 --- Number ?=0 Minor Planet Center (MPC) number
25- 31 F7.4 h Per Rotation period from GLS
34- 39 F6.4 h e_Per 1-sigma uncertainty on period
41- 48 F8.6 --- Fap GLS false Alarm probability of detected period
51- 56 F6.4 mag Ampl Peak-to-peak light-curve amplitude
59- 64 F6.4 mag e_Ampl 1-sigma uncertainty on amplitude
66- 75 A10 --- DynClass Dynamical asteroid class
77- 78 A2 --- Taxonomy Taxonomic class
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Acknowledgements:
From Alexey Aergeyev, alexey.v.sergeyev(at)gmail.com
Based on data from NASA's Kepler/K2 mission. We used Kepler Cotrending
Basis Vectors (PDC), SkyBoT for SSO ephemerides, and the SsODNet/LCDB
compilations for reference periods and taxonomy where available.
(End) Patricia Vannier [CDS] 10-Nov-2025