313 new asteroid rotation periods from Palomar Transient Factory observations

Abstract

A new asteroid rotation period survey have 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 $R$ band with a cadence of $\sim$20 min during February 15--18, 2013. We detected 2500 known asteroids with a diameter range of 0.5 km $\le D\le$ 200 km. Of these, 313 objects had highly reliable rotation periods and exhibited the "spin barrier" at $\sim 2$ hours. In contrast to the flat spin rate distribution of the asteroids with 3 km $\le D\le$ 15 km shown by Pravec et al. (2008), our results deviated somewhat from a Maxwellian distribution and showed a decrease at the spin rate greater than 5 rev/day. One super-fast-rotator candidate and two possible binary asteroids were also found in this work.

arXiv comment18 pages, 20 figures and 2 very long tables

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