Abstract
The equilibrium points of the gravitational potential field of minor celestial bodies, including asteroids, comets, and irregular satellites of planets, are studied. In order to understand better the orbital dynamics of massless particles moving near celestial minor bodies and their internal structure, both internal and external equilibrium points of the potential field of the body are analyzed. In this paper, the location and stability of the equilibrium points of 23 minor celestial bodies are presented. In addition, the contour plots of the gravitational effective potential of these minor bodies are used to point out the differences between them. Furthermore, stability and topological classifications of equilibrium points are discussed, which clearly illustrate the topological structure near the equilibrium points and help to have an insight into the orbital dynamics around the irregular-shaped minor celestial bodies. The results obtained here show that there is at least one equilibrium point in the potential field of a minor celestial body, and the number of equilibrium points could be one, five, seven, and nine, which are all odd integers. It is found that for some irregular-shaped celestial bodies, there are more than four equilibrium points outside the bodies while for some others there are no external equilibrium points. If a celestial body has one equilibrium point inside the body, this one is more likely linearly stable.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the anonymous reviewer for an expeditious review and useful comments. This research was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program, 2012CB720000), the State Key Laboratory Foundation of Astronautic Dynamics (No. 2013ADL0202), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11372150).
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The x component of E1 of 951 Gaspra variation with density and angular velocity
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Wang, X., Jiang, Y. & Gong, S. Analysis of the potential field and equilibrium points of irregular-shaped minor celestial bodies. Astrophys Space Sci 353, 105–121 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10509-014-2022-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10509-014-2022-8