For Students
The rotation periods and shapes of asteroids are determined primarily by monitoring their changing brightness on timescales of minutes to days. Short-period fluctuations in brightness caused by the rotation of an irregularly shaped asteroid or a spherical spotted asteroid (i.e., one with albedo differences) produce a light curve—a graph of brightness versus time—that repeats at regular intervals corresponding to an asteroid’s rotation period. The range of brightness variation is closely related to an asteroid’s shape or spottedness but is more difficult to interpret. By 2020 reliable rotation periods were known for more than 5,500 asteroids. They range from 25 seconds ...(100 of 10591 words)