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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 8.

Chaotic rotation of Namaka. When initialized, Namaka rotates once every 6 days and is aligned with its orbit. After just a few decades, Namaka becomes attitude-unstable and begins to tumble. Chaos is a natural consequence of Namaka’s eccentric orbit and is inevitable if Namaka has been substantially despun. In this sense, Namaka is very similar to Saturn’s satellite Hyperion, which chaotically rotates due to its eccentric orbit around Saturn (Wisdom et al. 1984; Klavetter 1989).

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