Summary
From Earth, the Trojan asteroids appear to be single points of light; their light curves—the way their observed brightness varies with time—are one of the few clues available to scientists working to determine the shapes of these distant bodies. Your challenge is to design a tool that allows users to explore how the shape of an asteroid affects the appearance of its light curve.
Details
BACKGROUND
This fall the NASA Lucy Mission will begin its 12-year journey to investigate a record-breaking eight asteroids in the first-ever mission to the Trojan asteroids—a population of small bodies that lead and follow Jupiter in its orbit around the Sun. Many asteroids (especially small ones) have interesting, irregular shapes. But as these asteroids are both small (less than 100 miles or 160 km wide) and very far away (hundreds of millions of miles or kilometers) they appear as unresolved points of light, even when viewed using our largest Earth-based and Earth-orbiting telescopes. Consequently, we won’t know for sure what these asteroids look like until the Lucy spacecraft flies by these enigmatic bodies in 2027-2033. However, that won’t stop us from working to collect as many clues as possible about these bodies today, from here on Earth.
One of the few ways scientists can try to estimate an asteroid’s shape from an extreme distance is by looking at its light curve—i.e., examining how bright the asteroid is and how that brightness changes with time. As an irregularly shaped asteroid spins, the amount of light it reflects changes. If you watch an asteroid long enough, the brightness changes repeat, and that repeating light curve can help scientists determine its rotation speed and its shape. And if you watch the asteroid even longer, the light curve can change as the Earth and asteroid orbit around the Sun, revealing how the asteroid is oriented in space.
However, the relationship of a light curve to the asteroid shape is not necessarily unique. Asteroids of different shapes could generate indistinguishable light curves.
https://2021.spaceappschallenge.org/challenges/statements/when-light-curves-throw-us-curve-balls/details
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