The rotation states predominant among the planetary satellites

Abstract

On the basis of tidal despinning timescale arguments, Peale showed in 1977 that the majority of irregular satellites (with unknown rotation states) are expected to reside close to their initial (fast) rotation states. Here we investigate the problem of the current typical rotation states among all known satellites from a viewpoint of dynamical stability. We explore location of the known planetary satellites on the ($\omega_0$, $e$) stability diagram, where $\omega_0$ is an inertial parameter of a satellite and $e$ is its orbital eccentricity. We show that most of the satellites with unknown rotation states cannot rotate synchronously, because no stable synchronous 1:1 spin-orbit state exists for them. They rotate either much faster than synchronously (those tidally unevolved) or, what is much less probable, chaotically (tidally evolved objects or captured slow rotators).