This is a list of tumblers,

minor planet According to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a minor planet is an astronomical object in direct orbit around the Sun that is exclusively classified as neither a planet nor a comet. Before 2006, the IAU officially used the term '' ...

comet A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or Coma (cometary), coma, and sometimes also a Comet ta ...

s and

natural satellite A natural satellite is, in the most common usage, an astronomical body that orbits a planet, dwarf planet, or small Solar System body (or sometimes another natural satellite). Natural satellites are often colloquially referred to as ''moons ...

s whose

angular momentum In physics, angular momentum (rarely, moment of momentum or rotational momentum) is the rotational analog of linear momentum. It is an important physical quantity because it is a conserved quantity—the total angular momentum of a closed sy ...

vector is far from the principal axis of inertia, so that they do not rotate in a fairly constant manner with a constant period. Instead of rotating around a constant axis or around a wobbling axis, they appear to tumble (see

Poinsot's ellipsoid In classical mechanics, Poinsot's construction (after Louis Poinsot) is a geometrical method for visualizing the torque-free motion of a rotating rigid body, that is, the motion of a rigid body on which no external forces are acting. This motion ha ...

for an explanation). For true tumbling, the three moments of inertia must be different. If two are equal, then the axis of rotation will simply precess in a circle. As of 2018, there are 3

s and 198 confirmed or likely tumblers out of a total of nearly 800,000 discovered

small Solar System bodies A small Solar System body (SSSB) is an object in the Solar System that is neither a planet, a dwarf planet, nor a natural satellite. The term was first defined in 2006 by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) as follows: "All other objects, ...

. The data is sourced from the "Lightcurve Data Base" (LCDB). The tumbling of a body can be caused by the torque from asymmetrically emitted radiation known as the

YORP effect Yorp or YORP may refer to one of the following: * 54509 YORP, an Earth co-orbital asteroid * Yarkovsky–O'Keefe–Radzievskii–Paddack effect, a second-order variation on the Yarkovsky effect *Yorps, friendly one-eyed Martians from the Commander K ...

. Note that the rotation periods given below are approximate. The rotation period is not constant for a tumbler.

Natural satellites

This is a list of tumbling

s (moons) that orbit

planets A planet is a large, rounded astronomical body that is neither a star nor its remnant. The best available theory of planet formation is the nebular hypothesis, which posits that an interstellar cloud collapses out of a nebula to create a young ...

and

dwarf planets A dwarf planet is a small planetary-mass object that is in direct orbit of the Sun, smaller than any of the eight classical planets but still a world in its own right. The prototypical dwarf planet is Pluto. The interest of dwarf planets to pl ...

in the

Solar System The Solar System Capitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar ...

Minor planets and comets

Notes

References

External links

Those Tumbling Asteroids
''The Messenger'' (1976),

ESA , owners = , headquarters = Paris, Île-de-France, France , coordinates = , spaceport = Guiana Space Centre , seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png , seal_size = 130px , image = Views in the Main Control Room (1 ...

Asteroid Lightcurve Database (LCDB)
query form

JPL Small-Body Database Browser
{{DEFAULTSORT:List of tumblers Tumblers (small Solar System bodies) tumblers

Natural satellites

Minor planets and comets

Notes

References

See also

External links