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P.S. Barrera-Pineda (Instituto Nacional de Astrofisica Optica y Electronica), A.J. Lovell (Department of Physics and Astronomy Agnes Scott College), F.P. Schloerb (Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory, University of Massachusetts), L. Carrasco (Instituto Nacional de Astrofisica Optica y Electronica)
The thermal emission from asteroids at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths contains clues about the physical nature of the surface layers of the object. The advent of millimeter-wave telescopes with large collecting areas, such as the 50m Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) now under construction in Mexico, makes it practical to study this emission from a large sample of objects. With this eventual purpose in mind, we have been developing a detailed thermal models to interpret millimeter and submillimeter observations. The new model is a full thermophysical model which uses new data from physical studies of the thermal properties of stony and FeNi meteorites as well as inferences about surface physical properties derived from asteroid radar studies. This model allows calculation of the continuum emission from the submillimeter (450 microns) to radio wavelengths (20 cm). In this work we present preliminary results of the model, compared with the observational history of Ceres, Pallas and Vesta taken from the literature and from our own observations carried out with the FCRAO 14-m telescope and the BIMA millimetric array in the period from October 1993 to June 1995.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: pbarrera@inaoep.mx