| Seminar Title |
Spin, Shape, and Interior of Near-Earth Asteroid 4179 Toutatis |
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Speaker: |
Dr. Michael Busch |
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Affiliation: |
(National Radio Astronomy Observatory & SETI Institute) |
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When: |
Monday morning, Sept. 30th, 10:00 a.m |
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Where: |
Room 517,Office Block, 2 West Beijing Road (PMO, CAS) |
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Welcome to Attend |
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( PMO Academic Committee & Academic Circulating committee) |
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Abstract
The contact binary near-Earth asteroid 4179 Toutatis has been observed with radar imaging from the Arecibo Observatory and from NASA's Goldstone Solar System Radar during each of its Earth flybys since 1992. In 2012, we observed Toutatis over a third-week period bracketing the Chang'e 2 flyby, with resolution as fine as 3.75 m.
Toutatis is in a non-principal axis spin state, perturbed by gravitational tides from the Sun and from the Earth. We have modeled Toutatis' spin state from 1992 to 2012, fitting the asteroid's moments of inertia and constraining its internal density distribution. We are preparing an updated model of Toutatis' shape, based on all of the radar data and comparing to the Chang'e 2 optical images.
