The Visible Spectral Properties of Trojans and NEOs

特洛伊木马和近地天体的可见光谱特性

• 批准号: 1313144
• 负责人: Andrew Rivkin
• 金额: $ 26.41万
• 依托单位: Johns Hopkins University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-09-01 至 2018-10-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1313144&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Visible; Spectral; Properties; Trojans; NEOs

The Trojan asteroids orbit the Sun in a 1:1 resonance with Jupiter, centered on, and librating around, that planet's L4 and L5 Lagrange points. Originally thought to have been captured form the outer parts of the asteroid belt, the Trojans are proposed in newer theories to have been captured from the Kuiper belt during a period of extreme mixing of the small bodies of the Solar System. In-depth study of these objects provides constraints on the degree of dynamical mixing in the early Solar System as well as on the compositions of primitive bodies. In this project, the Principal Investigator and collaborators will use ground-based telescopes in Arizona and South Africa to make visible and near-infrared spectrophotometric observations of hundreds of Trojan asteroids as well as dozens of near-Earth objects (NEOs), obtaining taxonomic classifications and spectral slopes. Determining the relative fractions of the dominant taxonomic classes at different sizes of Trojans will constrain dynamical mixing implied by the "Nice Model" of the early Solar System. By combining new and archival data, the team hopes also to determine whether the different spectral types seen are related by "space weathering" processes or actually reflect compositional differences. The NEO observations will complement other ongoing observational programs and are designed to aid in the timely characterization of potentially hazardous objects and possible space mission targets.

特洛伊小行星与木星以1：1共振的方式绕太阳运行，以木星的L4和L5拉格朗日点为中心并围绕其振动。特洛伊人最初被认为是从小行星带的外部捕获的，但在新的理论中，特洛伊人被认为是在太阳系小天体极端混合的时期从柯伊伯带捕获的。对这些天体的深入研究提供了对早期太阳系动力学混合程度以及原始天体组成的限制。在该项目中，主要研究员和合作者将利用亚利桑那州和南非的地面望远镜对数百颗特洛伊小行星和数十颗近地天体进行可见光和近红外分光光度观测，获得分类和光谱斜率。确定在不同大小的特洛伊的优势分类类的相对分数将约束动力学混合暗示的“尼斯模型”的早期太阳系。通过结合新的和档案数据，该团队还希望确定所看到的不同光谱类型是否与“空间风化”过程相关，或者实际上反映了成分差异。近地天体观测将补充其他正在进行的观测方案，旨在帮助及时确定潜在危险物体和可能的空间使命目标的特征。