AO Images of Asteroids, Inverting their Lightcurves, and SSA
Abstract
In a program to study asteroids with large telescopes, we have recently obtained images of Main- Belt asteroids with adaptive optics (AO) on the Keck-II 10 meter telescope, the world's largest. Although generally featureless as expected, these images show irregular asteroid outlines, and by following the changing size and orientation we have been able to deduce their full triaxial ellipsoid dimensions and spin axis direction in less than one night. Even before the first such AO images Kaasalainen [1,2] and his colleagues made attempts to deduce the shape of asteroids from their lightcurves. We compare our AO images to these lightcurve inversion (LCI) models, and show the excellent agreement. Similar techniques can be applied to satellite lightcurves.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2008
- Accession Number
- ADA532023
Entities
People
- Jack Drummond
- Julian Christou
Organizations
- Air Force Research Laboratory