Noemi Pinilla‐Alonso

Spacecraft missions to asteroids have revealed surfaces that have variations in albedo and spectral properties. Such variations are also detected across the asteroid population with ground‐based observations, and are controlled by the physical characteristics of the regolith and by processes such as space weathering. Here, we investigate how space weathering and regolith grain size influence the spectra of ordinary chondrite‐like asteroids observed from ground‐based spectroscopy. The estimation of diagnostic band parameters from asteroid visible and near‐infrared reflectance spectra allow us to estimate the degree of space weathering and their compositions, using results from an accompanying study (MacLennan et al., 2024). We use grain size estimations gleaned from the thermal inertia to show that regolith particle size differences have similar effect as space weathering on asteroid spectra. Finally, we quantify changes in spectral slope and band depth among asteroids using the space weathering index developed by MacLennan et al (2024), and reassess the importance of previously‐proposed surface freshening mechanisms.

We present 24 new dense light curves of the near-Earth asteroids (3103) Eger, (161989) Cacus, (2100) Ra-Shalom, and (12711) Tukmit, obtained with the Instituto Astrofísico Canarias 80 and Telescopio Abierto Remoto 2 telescopes at the Teide Observatory (Tenerife, Spain) during 2021 and 2022, in the framework of projects visible NEAs observations survey and NEO Rapid Observation, Characterization and Key Simulations. The shape models and rotation state parameters (P, λ, β) were computed by applying the light curve inversion method to the new data altogether with the archival data. For (3013) Eger and (161989) Cacus, our shape models and rotation state parameters agree with previous works, though they have smaller uncertainties. For (2100) Ra-Shalom, our results also agree with previous studies. Still, we find that a Yarkovsky–O’Keefe–Radzievskii–Paddack acceleration of υ = (0.223 ± 0.237) × 10−8 rad d−2 slightly improves the fit of the light curves, suggesting that (2100) Ra-Shalom could be affected by this acceleration. We also present for the first time a shape model for (12711) Tukmit, along with its rotation state parameters (P = 3.484900 ± 0.000031 h, λ = 27° ± 8°, β = 9° ± 15°).