Cellinoid Shape Model for Asteroids

Abstract

The ellipsoid shape model plays an important role in physical research on asteroids. However, its symmetric structure cannot practically simulate real asteroids. This article applies a general shape model, named the cellinoid, instead of the ellipsoid model to simulate the asymmetric shape of asteroids. The cellinoid shape model consists of eight octants of ellipsoids having different semi-axes, with the constraint that adjacent octants must have two equal semi-axes in common. Totally, the shape of the cellinoid model is controlled by six parameters, not three as in the case of the shape of the ellipsoid. Using this shape model, the brightness of asteroids observed from the Earth can be fitted numerically by the surface triangularization of the cellinoid. The Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm is also employed here to solve a nonlinear minimization problem. Owing to the asymmetric shape of the cellinoid, the physical parameters of asteroids, such as the rotation period and pole orientation, can be fitted more accurately than in the case of the ellipsoid model. Finally, this is confirmed numerically by applying the shape to both synthetic light curves and real light curves of asteroids. Additionally, the center of mass and moment of inertia of the cellinoid are analyzed explicitly.