Other
Scientific paper
Oct 2007
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007dps....39.3504t&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #39, #35.04; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.482
Other
Scientific paper
Traditionally, asteroid shapes have been modeled using triaxial ellipsoids that are completely defined by only two parameters. Recently, more complex shape models have become common, raising a question about how to characterize the shape features in these models. One of the modern methods is the convex inversion method which offers an arbitrary convex polyhedron shape model. Also radar-based and space-mission-based nonconvex models have become more and more common. The burden of such complex shape models is that there is no way to express the exact shape solution in a simple numerical form due to the large number of parameters. We can, however, provide an approximation of the shape using various quantities and, in this way, characterize the most important features with a small number of parameters. In addition to providing an illustrative way to describe the shape of a single asteroid, a small number of characteristic shape parameters enables statistical analyses of the shapes.
We present five approaches to determine the dimensions of an irregular shape. Our examples consist of convex shapes, but the methods are applicable to non-convex starlike shapes as well. Three of the methods describe the actual dimensions of the target, one gives the principal moments, and the remaining one the main components. The scale of irregularity of an asteroid is here given as the residual of an ellipsoid-fit.
We have computed distributions of axis ratios for convex solutions of nearly one hundred main-belt and near-Earth asteroids and compared the results from different methods. We also study the correlations between object shape and other physical properties, e.g., asteroid taxonomic class. In a way, we return to the beginning, expressing the shapes as axial ratios of the object, but this time derived from the shape itself instead of the lightcurve of the object.
Muinonen Karri
Torppa Johanna
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