The slow rotation of 253 Mathilde

NEAR Encounter with Asteroid 253 Mathilde: Overview

“…MSI has rectangular pixels (27 × 16 µm), corresponding to 162 × 96 µrad/pixel. constraint on the spin period of Mathilde, which according to Mottola et al (1995) is 417 h (with a lightcurve amplitude of 0.45 mag). No changes in shadow positions were noted over a period of some 10 min when the highest resolution views are available, from which Thomas et al set a lower limit of 1.8 days on Mathilde's spin period.…”

Mathilde: Size, Shape, and Geology

“…These data provide an excellent range of viewing angles, although parts of the southern area of the asteroid were viewed over only a very small range of aspects. Because of the slow rotation rate (418 h; Mottola et al 1995), lighting was effectively constant during the 25-min encounter.…”

Near‐Earth Asteroid Rendezvous: Mission overview

“…Mathilde is a large Ctype asteroid [Binzel et al, 1996] of mean diameter -60 km that has been recently discovered to have an anomalously large rotation period of 17.4 days [Mottola et al, 1995]. This rotation is more than an order of magnitude slower than that of typical asteroids.…”