Light curves of ten Centaurs from K2 measurements
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC-BY license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ; Here we present the results of visible range light curve observations of ten Centaurs using the Kepler Space Telescope in the framework of the K2 mission. Well defined periodic light curves are obtained in six cases allowing us to derive rotational periods, a notable increase in the number of Centaurs with known rotational properties. The low amplitude light curves of (471931) 2013 PH44 and (250112) 2002 KY14 can be explained either by albedo variegations, binarity or elongated shape. (353222) 2009 YD7 and (514312) 2016 AE193 could be rotating elongated objects, while 2017 CX33 and 2012 VU85 are the most promising binary candidates due to their slow rotations and higher light curve amplitudes. (463368) 2012 VU85 has the longest rotation period, P = 56.2 h observed among Centaurs. The P > 20 h rotation periods obtained for the two potential binaries underlines the importance of long, uninterrupted time series photometry of solar system targets that can suitably be performed only from spacecraft, like the Kepler in the K2 mission, and the currently running TESS mission. © 2020 The Authors ; The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union 's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, under Grant Agreement No. 687378 ; from the K-125015 , PD-116175 , PD-128360 , and GINOP-2.3.2-15-2016-00003 grants of the National Research Development and Innovation Office (NKFIH, Hungary); and from the LP2012-31 and LP2018-7/2019 Lendület grants of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences . L. M. was supported by the Premium Postdoctoral Research Program of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences . The research leading to these results have been supported by the ÚNKP-19-2 New National Excellence Program of the Ministry of Human Capacities , Hungary. Funding for the Kepler and K2 missions are provided by the NASA Science Mission Directorate. The data presented in this paper were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST). STScI is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555 . Support for MAST for non-HST data is provided by the NASA Office of Space Science via grant NNX09AF08G and by other grants and contracts. The authors thank the hospitality of the Veszprém Regional Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA VEAB), where part of this project was carried out. We also indebted to S. Benecchi and an anonymous reviewer for their comments which have helped to improve the paper. ; Peer reviewed