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Alex Storrs, Eddie Wells (STScI), Alan Stern (SwRI), Ben Zellner (Ga. Southern Univ.)
We have imaged eight main belt asteroids with WFPC2 (planetary camera) on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). These are 8 Flora, 10 Hygiea, 11 Parthenope, 29 Amphitrite, 54 Alexandra, 89 Julia, 144 Vibilia, and 1220 Crocus. The filters used define the continuum in the blue (F673N and F439W), as well as the width (F1042M) and depth (F953N) of the 1 micron silicate feature. These are the same as were used to image asteroid 4 Vesta in 1996 (Zellner et al. 1996) and some of this data is presented for comparison.
We present mineralogic multicolor maps (like that of 4 Vesta in Binzel et al. 1997) for some of the S-type and C-types asteroids. Maximum Entropy image restorations reveal no unequivocal surface albedo markings (like the "Olbers Regio" on Vesta). This is due mainly to the smaller size of the bodies studied.
No companions to these objects are apparent in a cursory examination of the data. A more in-depth processing of the data is planned in the coming year.
-------------------------- Binzel et al. 1997: Icarus vol. 128, pp. 95-103 Zellner et al. 1996: BAAS vol. 28, p. 1100
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: storrs@stsci.edu