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M. Kaasalainen (University of Helsinki)
Physical asteroid models can be constructed from unprecedentedly small sets of single calibrated photometric measurements sparse in time but well distributed in observing geometries. Sidereal periods, pole directions, coarse shape estimates, and solar phase behaviour can be solved with accuracy sufficient for the statistical analysis of a large sample of the asteroid population. Systematic groundbased photometric surveys with wide-field telescopes would typically result in thousands of asteroid models within a few years. As a rule of thumb, about one hundred calibrated data points within four to five years should well suffice for modelling a main-belt asteroid, and models of near-Earth objects can be obtained even faster. The calibration accuracy should be better than 0.05 mag. In the next decade, GAIA photometry will provide a dataset for thousands of asteroids. It would be important to combine it with preliminary and follow-up groundbased surveys.
A large database of thousands of asteroid spin states and basic shapes would provide us with the big picture of the whole asteroid population and facilitate a completely new level in the studies of asteroids' dynamical and physical evolution. Such a database can be constructed without having to observe traditional lightcurves at all. From this database we can then pick out interesting targets (peculiar shapes, probable binary systems, etc.) that require further observations such as full lightcurves or radar experiments. This would also make the detailed observations more time-efficient.
Reference: M. Kaasalainen (2004), Astron.Astrophys. 422, L39.
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The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: mjk.at.rni.helsinki.fi
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 #4
© 2004. The American Astronomical Soceity.