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Formation of Moons and Equatorial Ridge around Top-shaped Asteroids after Surface Landslide

  • Authors: Ryuki Hyodo, Keisuke Sugiura

Ryuki Hyodo and Keisuke Sugiura 2022 The Astrophysical Journal Letters 937 .

  • Provider: AAS Journals

Caption: Figure 1.

Schematic summary of our paper. Panel (a): a rubble-pile asteroid spins up due to, for example, the YORP effect, small impacts, a close encounter with a planet, or re-accumulation after a catastrophic impact. Panel (b): a surface landslide occurs when a critical spin state is realized and a top-shaped figure is formed (Sugiura et al. 2021). Panel (c): a particulate disk spreads due to inelastic collisions and gravitational interactions among particles. Panel (d): a moon is gravitationally accreted outside the Roche limit of the central top-shaped body, and an axisymmetric equatorial ridge is formed due to the re-accretion of disk particles. Panels (e) and (f): the formed moon is lost or remains, depending on the long-term orbital evolution between the moon and the primary.

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