English

Obliquities of "Top-Shaped" Asteroids May Not Imply Reshaping by YORP Spin-up

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2015-06-23 v2

Abstract

The timescales over which the YORP effect alters the rotation period and the obliquity of a small asteroid can be very different, because the corresponding torques couple to different aspects of the object's shape. For nearly axisymmetric, "top-shaped" near-Earth asteroids such as 101955 Bennu, spin timescales are an order of magnitude or more longer than obliquity timescales, which are of order 10^5 to 10^6 yr. The observed low obliquities (near 0 or 180 degrees) of top-shaped asteroids do not constitute evidence that they acquired their present shapes and spins through YORP spin-up, because low obliquities are expected regardless of the spin-up or reshaping mechanism.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1411.0638,
  title  = {Obliquities of "Top-Shaped" Asteroids May Not Imply Reshaping by YORP Spin-up},
  author = {Thomas S. Statler},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1411.0638},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

10 pages, 2 figures, Icarus in press. 2 typos corrected, 1 arXiv reference added