{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/modeling-the-light-curve-of-oumuamua-evidence","title":"Modeling the light curve of `Oumuamua: evidence for torque and disc-like shape","arxiv_id":"1906.03696","date":"2019-06-09","proceeding":null,"authors":["Sergey Mashchenko"],"abstract":"We present the first attempt to fit the light curve of the interstellar visitor `Oumuamua using a physical model which includes optional torque. We consider both conventional (Lommel-Seeliger triaxial ellipsoid) and alternative (\"black-and-white ball\", \"solar sail\") brightness models. With all the brightness models, some torque is required to explain the timings of the most conspicuous features -- deep minima -- of the asteroid's light curve. Our best-fitting models are a thin disc (aspect ratio 1:6) and a thin cigar (aspect ratio 1:8) which are very close to being axially symmetric. Both models are tumbling and require some torque which has the same amplitude in relation to `Oumuamua's linear non-gravitational acceleration as in Solar System comets which dynamics is affected by outgassing. Assuming random orientation of the angular momentum vector, we compute probabilities for our best-fitting models. We show that cigar-shaped models suffer from a fine-tuning problem and have only 16 per cent probability to produce light curve minima as deep as the ones present in `Oumuamua's light curve. Disc-shaped models, on the other hand, are very likely (at 91 per cent) to produce minima of the required depth. From our analysis, the most likely model for `Oumuamua is a thin disc (slab) experiencing moderate torque from outgassing.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.03696v1","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/1906.03696v1.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"links_only","authors_date_abstract":"arXiv metadata, CC0 1.0 (https://info.arxiv.org/help/license), from the Kaggle arXiv metadata snapshot of 2026-09-12"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"modeling-the-light-curve-of-oumuamua-evidence","repo_url":"https://github.com/pulsar123/Asteroid","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"none","reach":null}],"tasks":[],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"syntology_url":null,"atlas_url":null,"mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}