37th DPS Meeting, 4-9 September 2005
Session 15 Asteroid Physical Studies
Poster, Monday, September 5, 2005, 6:00-7:15pm, Music Recital Room

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[15.18] Arecibo Radar Imaging of 4 Vesta

M. C. Nolan, E. S. Howell (Arecibo Obs.), C. Magri (U. Maine Farmington / Arecibo Obs.), S. J. Ostro, J. D. Giorgini (JPL), D. B. Campbell, J.-L. Margot (Cornell U.), S. Hudson (Washington St. U.)

We obtained radar delay-Doppler images of asteroid 4 Vesta with the Arecibo 2380-MHz planetary radar on 11 dates from 2003 March 23 to 2003 May 4. These images, which have a spatial resolution of 7--30 km, show multi-km topographic relief at low latitudes on Vesta. An ellipsoidal shape reconstruction using the method of Hudson (1993) gives axial ratios of a/c = 1.26 and a/b= 1.03, in agreement with those determined by Thomas et al. (1997). We are continuing with higher-order fits to the data, and will include earlier radar ``CW'' data from 2001, lightcurve data, and plane-of-sky imaging by HST and others in the modeling.


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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 37 #3
© 2004. The American Astronomical Soceity.