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Beyond Point Masses. III. Detecting Haumea’s Nonspherical Gravitational Field

  • Authors: Benjamin C. N. Proudfoot, Darin A. Ragozzine, William Giforos, Will M. Grundy, Mariah MacDonald, William J. Oldroyd

Benjamin C. N. Proudfoot et al 2024 The Planetary Science Journal 5 .

  • Provider: AAS Journals

Caption: Figure 6.

The precession of Hi’iaka’s spin axis based on its initial obliquity. Similar to Figure 5, we show the precession of Hi’iaka’s spin axis in terms of ecliptic longitude and latitude. Initial integration parameters have been chosen to be representative of the posterior found in Table 2. The moments of inertia of Hi’iaka were chosen to be similar to objects of similar size, although their values only change the frequency of the precession. For different initial obliquities, we find different precession periods, matching analytical theory and results in the literature (e.g., Hastings et al. 2016). Interestingly, there are small variations when Hi’iaka’s spin is initially aligned with its orbit. Although initially there would be no net torque and no precession when aligned, since Hi’iaka’s orbit precesses the alignment is broken and precession begins.

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