English

How do the small planetary satellites rotate?

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2015-05-13 v2

Abstract

We investigate the problem of the typical rotation states of the small planetary satellites from the viewpoint of the dynamical stability of their rotation. We show that the majority of the discovered satellites with unknown rotation periods cannot rotate synchronously, because no stable synchronous 1:1 spin-orbit state exists for them. They rotate either much faster than synchronously (those tidally unevolved) or, what is much less probable, chaotically (tidally evolved objects or captured slow rotators).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0907.1939,
  title  = {How do the small planetary satellites rotate?},
  author = {Alexander V. Melnikov and Ivan I. Shevchenko},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0907.1939},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

5 pages, 1 figure

R2 v1 2026-06-21T13:23:52.930Z