Shape Model and Rotation Acceleration of (1685) Toro and (85989) 1999 JD6 from Optical Observations

Abstract

The Yarkovsky-O’Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack (YORP) effect is a net torque caused by solar radiation directly reflected and thermally re-emitted from the surface of small asteroids and is considered to be crucial in their dynamical evolution. By long-term photometric observations of selected near-Earth asteroids, it is hoped to enlarge asteroid samples with a detected YORP effect to facilitate the development of a theoretical framework. Archived light-curve data are collected and photometric observations are made for (1685) Toro and (85989) 1999 JD6, which enables measurement of their YORP effect by inverting the light curve to fit observations from a convex shape model. For (1685) Toro, a YORP acceleration υ = (3.2 ± 0.3) × 10−9 rad · day−2 (1σ error) is updated, which is consistent with previous YORP detection based on different light-curve data; for (85989) 1999 JD6, it is determined that the sidereal period is 7.667 749 ± 0.000009 hr, the rotation pole direction is located at λ = 232° ± 2°, β = − 59° ± 1°, the acceleration is detected to be υ = (2.4 ± 0.3) × 10−8 rad · day−2 (1σ error) and in addition to obtaining an excellent agreement between the observations and model. YORP should produce both spin-up and spin-down cases. However, including (85989) 1999 JD6, the dω/dt values of 11 near-Earth asteroids are positive totally, which suggests that there is either a bias in the sample of YORP detections or a real feature needs to be explained.