Time-series and Phasecurve Photometry of Episodically-Active Asteroid (6478) Gault in a Quiescent State Using APO, GROWTH, P200 and ZTF
| Autor: | Ashish Mahabal, Frank J. Masci, Nathan Golovich, Robert M. Quimby, Andrew J. Drake, Igor Andreoni, Iva S. Kostadinova, Kevin B. Burdge, Chow-Choong Ngeow, Dennis Bodewits, Shreya Anand, Hector Rodriguez, Tomas Ahumada, Joannes van Roestel, Chengxing Zhai, P. Mróz, Christoffer Fremling, Kritti Sharma, Russ R. Laher, Chris M. Copperwheat, Yuhan Yao, Josiah N. Purdum, Kaushik De, Reed Riddle, Wing-Huen Ip, Philip Choi, Zhong-Yi Lin, David Hale, Michael W. Coughlin, Carey M. Lisse, Matthew J. Graham, Jeffry Zolkower, Bryce Bolin, Chan-Kao Chang, Yanga R. Fernandez, Roger Smith, Alexandre Delacroix, Navtej Saini, Erik C. Kool, Varun Bhalerao, Lin Yan, Richard Dekany, Josef Hanus, Dmitry A. Duev, Mansi M. Kasliwal, Chen Yen Hsu, Shrinivas R. Kulkarni, Michael Shao, Rick Burruss, Richard Walters, Harsh Kumar, James D. Neill |
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| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: |
Physics
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP) 010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences Series (mathematics) Quiescent state FOS: Physical sciences Astronomy and Astrophysics Astrophysics Phase curve 01 natural sciences Photometry (astronomy) Space and Planetary Science Asteroid 0103 physical sciences 010303 astronomy & astrophysics 0105 earth and related environmental sciences Astrophysics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics |
| DOI: | 10.48550/arxiv.2102.13017 |
| Popis: | We observed Episodically Active Asteroid (6478) Gault in 2020 with multiple telescopes in Asia and North America and have found that it is no longer active after its recent outbursts at the end of 2018 and start of 2019. The inactivity during this apparation allowed us to measure the absolute magnitude of Gault of H_r = 14.63 +/- 0.02, G_r = 0.21 +/- 0.02 from our secular phasecurve observations. In addition, we were able to constrain Gault's rotation period using time-series photometric lightcurves taken over 17 hours on multiple days in 2020 August, September and October. The photometric lightcurves have a repeating $\lesssim$0.05 magnitude feature suggesting that (6478) Gault has a rotation period of ~2.5 hours and may have a semi-spherical or top-like shape, much like Near-Earth Asteroids Ryugu and Bennu. The rotation period of ~2.5 hours is near to the expected critical rotation period for an asteroid with the physical properties of (6478) Gault suggesting that its activity observed over multiple epochs is due to surface mass shedding from its fast rotation spun up by the Yarkovsky-O'Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack effect. Comment: 23 pages, 18 figures; Accepted by ApJ Letters |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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