Illumination conditions at the Asteroid 4 Vesta: Implications for the presence of water ice

被引：13
作者：
Stubbs, Timothy J. [1 ,2 ,4 ]
Wang, Yongli [1 ,3 ,4 ]
机构：
[1] NASA, Goddard Space Flight Ctr, Greenbelt, MD 20771 USA
[2] Univ Maryland Baltimore Cty, Ctr Res & Explorat Space Sci & Technol, Baltimore, MD 21250 USA
[3] Univ Maryland Baltimore Cty, Goddard Planetary Heliophys Inst, Baltimore, MD 21228 USA
[4] NASA, Ames Res Ctr, NASA Lunar Sci Inst, Moffett Field, CA 94035 USA
来源：
ICARUS | 2012年 / 217卷 / 01期
关键词：
Asteroid Vesta; Asteroids; Surfaces; Ices; Solar radiation; Thermal histories; CERES;
D O I：
10.1016/j.icarus.2011.11.007
中图分类号：
P1 [天文学];
学科分类号：
0704 ;
摘要：
The mean illumination conditions and surface temperatures over one orbital period are calculated for the Asteroid 4 Vesta using a coarse digital elevation model produced from Hubble Space Telescope images. Even with the anticipated effects of finer-scale topography taken into account, it is unlikely that any significant permanently shadowed regions currently exist on Vesta due to its large axial tilt (approximate to 27 degrees). However, under present day conditions, it is predicted that about half of Vesta's surface has an average temperature of less than 145 K, which, based on previous thermal modeling of main belt asteroids, suggests that water ice could survive in the top few meters of the vestal regolith on billion-year timescales. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
引用
收藏
页码：272 / 276
页数：5
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