313 New Asteroid Rotation Periods from Palomar Transient Factory Observations
Abstract
A new asteroid rotation period survey has been carried out by using the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF). Twelve consecutive PTF fields, which covered an area of 87 deg^2 in the ecliptic plane, were observed in the R band with a cadence of ~20 minutes during 2013 February 15-18. We detected 2500 known asteroids with a diameter range of 0.5 km ≤ D ≤ 200 km. Of these, 313 objects had highly reliable rotation periods and exhibited the "spin barrier" at ~2 hr. In contrast to the flat spin-rate distribution of the asteroids with 3 km ≤ D ≤ 15 km shown by Pravec et al., our results deviated somewhat from a Maxwellian distribution and showed a decrease at the spin rate greater than 5 rev day^(–1). One superfast rotator candidate and two possible binary asteroids were also found in this work.
Additional Information
© 2014 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2014 February 14; accepted 2014 April 17; published 2014 May 16. This work is supported in part by the National Science Council of Taiwan under the grants NSC 101-2119-M-008-007-MY3 and NSC 102-2112-M-008-019-MY3. We thank Eran Ofek for valuable comments and suggestions that made the manuscript more complete. We also thank the referee, Joseph Masiero, for useful comments that helped to improve the content of the paper. This publication makes use of data products from WISE, which is a joint project of the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/ California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This publication also makes use of data products from NEOWISE, which is a project of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, funded by the Planetary Science Division of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. We gratefully acknowledge the extraordinary services specific to NEOWISE contributed by the International Astronomical Unions Minor Planet Center, operated by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams, operated by Harvard University.Attached Files
Published - 0004-637X_788_1_17.pdf
Submitted - 1405.1144v1.pdf
Files
0004-637X_788_1_17.pdf
Additional details
Identifiers
- Eprint ID
- 47078
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20140708-115611973
Related works
- Describes
- http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.1144 (URL)
Funding
- National Science Council (Taipei)
- NSC101-2119-M-008-007-MY3
- National Science Council (Taipei)
- NSC102-2112-M-008-019-MY3
- NASA/JPL/Caltech
Dates
- Created
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2014-07-08Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field