Characterizing small bodies in the Solar System

[christinahedges]

Constraining key properties of asteroids, such as rotation rate and shape, can further our understanding of the history of our own solar system.

The K2 mission targeted 366 small Solar System objects including 12 main-belt asteroids, 21 comets, 77 Trans-Neptunian Objects, and 243 Jovian Trojan and Hilda asteroids. Kepler’s exquisite data enable users to detect slow, low-amplitude rotation periods which are challenging to obtain from the ground. Additionally the high cadence and long baseline of K2 data compared to ground based observation greatly increase our ability to accurately measure light curves of these objects for several rotation periods.

Subsets of the data have already been used to study the shape and albedo of Trans-Neptunian Objects (P´al et al. 2015, 2016), characterize the rotational properties of Trojan asteroids (Ryan et al. 2017; Szab´o et al. 2017), and study the irregular satellites of Uranus (Farkas-Tak´acs et al. 2017). To date, no uniform catalog of small body characteristics based on K2 data has been published. Such study may provide exquisite data on the spin rates and binary fractions of different asteroid populations, potentially revealing new insights into the formation of our Solar System (Ryan et al. 2017).