New Asteroid Shape Models Derived from the Lowell Photometric Database
Abstract
Asteroid shapes and spin states can be derived from their disk-integrated sparse-in-time photometry by the lightcurve inversion method. A huge amount of sparse photometry is provided by current all-sky surveys. However, the data from surveys suffer from large random and systematic errors. Oszkiewicz et al. (2011, JQSRT 112, 1919) partly removed the systematic trends in the photometry reported to the MPC and created the so-called 'Lowell photometric database'. The database consists of re-calibrated photometry for about 500,000 asteroids, with typically hundreds of brightness measurements per object. Bowell et al. (M&PS, submitted) used this database to analyze brightness variations with ecliptic longitude and estimated spin-axis longitudes for about 350,000 asteroids. In our work, we processed data for the first 10,000 numbered asteroids with the lightcurve inversion method (Kaasalainen et al., 2001, Icarus 153,37) using an enormous computational power of Asteroids@home (http://asteroidsathome.net) - a distributed computing project built on the BOINC platform. More than 10,000 users have joined the project and their computers were used for the time-consuming search for the sidereal rotation period in the sparse data. Although the photometric accuracy of the Lowell data is low 0.2 mag), we were able to find unique models for several hundred asteroids. We will present the first results based on the statistical analysis of the sample (distribution of spin vectors, for example) and we will also discuss the relevance of our approach to Gaia, LSST, ATLAS, and other future sources of asteroid photometry with sparse sampling.
- Publication:
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AAS/Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting Abstracts #45
- Pub Date:
- October 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013DPS....4530405D