Effects of space weathering on the Trojan asteroids

Trojan asteroids orbit at Jupiter's L4 and L5 points. They are included in the D-class of asteroids because of their steep spectral slope. According to spectra of other asteroid classes, the larger the diameter is of a D-class asteroid, the redder the asteroid should be in the visible spectrum. We examined a total of fifteen asteroids, five (from the SMASS 1 data set) were small, and ten (newly collected data) were large. The actual results did not match our expected results, most likely due to the large error bars and the small data set. Space weathering may affect Trojans in the same way as it does other asteroid classes. To know with certainty, further investigation is needed.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2002

Author dc:creator

• Deet, April A. (April Anne)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Richard P. Binzel.

• Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/117441

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/117441