J/AJ/168/181 Asteroid rot. periods & amplitudes (SS1+TESSC1) (Gowanlock+, 2024)
Asteroid period solutions from combined dense and sparse photometry.
Gowanlock M., Trilling D.E., McNeill A., Kramer D., Chernyavskaya M.
<Astron. J., 168, 181 (2024)>
=2024AJ....168..181G 2024AJ....168..181G
ADC_Keywords: Minor planets; Surveys; Photometry; Optical
Keywords: Asteroids ; Astroinformatics ; Light curves ;
Small Solar System bodies ; Sky surveys
Abstract:
Deriving high-quality light curves for asteroids and other periodic
sources from survey data is challenging owing to many factors,
including the sparsely sampled observational record and diurnal
aliasing, which is a signature imparted into the periodic signal of a
source that is a function of the observing schedule of ground-based
telescopes. In this paper we examine the utility of combining asteroid
observational records from the Zwicky Transient Facility and the
Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which are the ground- and
space-based facilities, respectively, to determine to what degree the
data from the space-based facility can suppress diurnal aliases.
Furthermore, we examine several optimizations that are used to derive
the rotation periods of asteroids, which we then compare to the
reported rotation periods in the literature. Through this analysis we
find that we can reliably derive the rotation periods for ∼85% of
our sample of 222 objects that are also reported in the literature and
that the remaining ∼15% are difficult to reliably derive, as many
are asteroids that are insufficiently elongated, which produces a
light curve with an insufficient amplitude and, consequently, an
incorrect rotation period. We also investigate a binary classification
method that biases against reporting incorrect rotation periods. We
conclude the paper by assessing the utility of using other ground- or
space-based facilities as companion telescopes to the forthcoming
Rubin Observatory.
Description:
The SS1 (SNAPShot1; Trilling+ 2023AJ....165..111T 2023AJ....165..111T) data set contains
the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) observations of small bodies, with
the vast majority being main-belt asteroids. In the SS1 data release,
only those objects with ≥51 observations have an assigned derived
rotation period. Of those objects with ≥51 observations, there are a
total of 2,145,478 observations, from July, 2018 through May, 2020,
across 28,638 objects.
TESSC1 (TESS Cycle 1; McNeill+ 2023, J/AJ/166/152) contains
28,878 objects with a total of 5,637,892 observations from the
Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which took place between
July, 2018 and July, 2019. Unlike the ZTF data in SS1, light curves
were derived for all objects regardless of the number of observations.
Instead of using a threshold of 51 observations as for SS1,
McNeill+ (2023) assigned a confidence score to each object that
described the probability that the derived rotation period is correct.
We compare our period solutions to the Light Curve Data Base (LCDB;
Warner+, 2009Icar..202..134W 2009Icar..202..134W). However, there are only 222 objects
that are in SS1+TESSC1 and LCDB (denoted as LCDB+SS1+TESSC1). While
there are more objects in SS1+TESSC1 (3168), we have no baseline for
comparison for all of these objects, so we use the LCDB+SS1+TESSC1
data set for several of our comparisons. We use a version of LCDB from
2020 that excludes TESS data deposited by Pal+ 2020ApJS..247...26P 2020ApJS..247...26P
and McNeill+ (2023, J/AJ/166/152).
File Summary:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ReadMe 80 . This file
table5.dat 55 1623 *SS1+TESSC1 rotation periods and amplitudes for
the 1623 objects with high confidence (∼85%)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note on table5.dat: This table reports the rotation periods of the n=1623
asteroids defined where all periods with an Lomb-Scargle periodogram
(LSP) power <0.333 were removed (Figure 13). See Section 5.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
See also:
B/astorb : Orbits of Minor Planets (Bowell+, 2014-)
J/ApJ/763/32 : Galactic halo RRab stars from CSS (Drake+, 2013)
J/AJ/155/39 : Variability of TIC sources with KELT (Oelkers+, 2018)
J/AJ/166/152 : Main Belt Asteroid Rotation from TESS (McNeill+, 2023)
J/A+A/693/A66 : Asteroid rotation periods from TESS (Vavilov+, 2025)
http://www.minorplanet.info/ : MinorPlanet.info home page (which gives access
to the Lightcurve Database - LCDB)
Byte-by-byte Description of file: table5.dat
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1- 6 I6 -- MPC [70/455432] MPC Object ID (MPCDesig)
8- 16 F9.3 h Prot [3/10000] Rotation Period SS1 and TESSC1 (RotPer)
18- 22 F5.3 mag Amp [0.04/4.7] Lightcurve Amplitude SS1 and TESSC1
(Amplitude)
24- 30 F7.3 h ProtT [2.2/817] Rotation Period TESSC1 (RotPerTESSC1)
32- 40 F9.3 h ProtS [2/10000] Rotation Period SS1 (RotPerSS1)
42 A1 -- TRFl [Y/N] TESSC1 replacement flag
(Yes: 133 occurrences or No) (TESSC1Replacement)
44 A1 -- PFl [I/C] Binary classification prediction flag
(Incorrect period: 726 occurrences or
Correct period: 897 occurrences);
see Section 4.3
46- 55 F10.6 h ProtL [2.4/231]? Rotation Period LCDB (RotPerLCDB)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
History:
From electronic version of the journal
(End) Prepared by [AAS], Robin Leichtnam [CDS] 04-Jun-2025