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S. J. Bus, R. P. Binzel, T. H. Burbine (M. I. T.)
Visible reflectance spectroscopy measurements have been made for nearly 1500 main-belt and near-Earth asteroids as part of the second phase of the Small Main-belt Asteroid Spectroscopic Survey (SMASS II), initiated at M.I.T. in the early 1990's. A key advantage of this data set is its internal consistency, having been obtained entirely with the same instrument configuration at the MDM Observatory located on Kitt Peak, Arizona. Thus, this data set can be explored for trends in asteroid spectral properties that extend beyond the process of assigning taxonomic classifications (Bus et al. 1998, BAAS 30). We present results of our exploration of this data set for asteroid spectral trends that may be related to parameters such as size, orbit, observed phase angle, etc.