Asteroid Phase Curves: New Opportunities for Amateur Observers

The characteristics and sparsity of accurate asteroid phase curve data are highlighted. Though a challenging proposition for CCD photometricists, the author puts forward an observing methodology exploiting the Hipparcos Catalog as a source of homogeneous V magnitudes to perform 'quasi-absolute' photometry to high accuracy. A procedure for transforming unfiltered photometry to V magnitudes is described. Application of the quasi-absolute photometry methodology to variable star measurement is demonstrated.