Abstract
We have expanded the available sample of Trojan and Hilda lightcurve amplitudes by about a factor of 3. We compare the available sample of lightcurves of 26 Trojan and Hilda asteroids with lightcurves of belt asteroids. The sample of Trojans and Hildas appears to have a greater incidence of high amplitudes than the belt asteroids of comparable size, suggesting more elongated shapes. The 100-km-scale Trojans (and probably the Hildas) currently have only a few percent of the collision frequency of main-belt asteroids. We infer that they have experienced less collisional evolution, possibly affecting their relative degree of fragmentation and hence their shapes. If these results re verified, one promising hypothesis would be that 100-km-scale primitive planetesimals formed with more irregular shapes than present-day belt asteroids of similar size, which may have been rounded by collisional erosion. Other hypotheses are discussed.
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