Asteroid phase curves from ATLAS dual-band photometry

Abstract

Asteroid phase curves are used to derive fundamental physical properties through the determination of the absolute magnitude H. The upcoming visible Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) and mid-infrared Near-Earth Object Surveillance Mission (NEOSM) surveys rely on these absolute magnitudes to derive the colours and albedos of millions of asteroids. Furthermore, the shape of the phase curves reflects their surface compositions, allowing for conclusions on their taxonomy. We derive asteroid phase curves from dual-band photometry acquired by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System telescopes. Using Bayesian parameter inference, we retrieve the absolute magnitudes and slope parameters of 127,012 phase curves of 94,777 asteroids in the photometric $H,G_1,G_2$- and $H,G_{12}^{\ast }$-systems. The taxonomic complexes of asteroids separate in the observed $G_1,G_2$-distributions, correlating with their mean visual albedo. This allows for differentiating the X-complex into the P-, M-, and E-complexes using the slope parameters as alternative to albedo measurements. Further, taxonomic misclassifications from spectrophotometric datasets as well as interlopers in dynamical families of asteroids reveal themselves in $G_1,G_2$-space. The $H,G_{12}^{\ast }$-model applied to the serendipitous observations is unable to resolve target taxonomy. The $G_1,G_2$ phase coefficients show wavelength-dependency for the majority of taxonomic complexes. Serendipitous asteroid observations allow for reliable phase curve determination for a large number of asteroids. To ensure that the acquired absolute magnitudes are suited for colour computations, it is imperative that future surveys densely cover the opposition effects of the phase curves, minimizing the uncertainty on H. The phase curve slope parameters offer an accessible dimension for taxonomic classification.

Accepted for publication in Icarus. The catalogue of absolute magnitudes and phase parameters is publicly available at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/qcat?VII/288. 20 pages, 15 figures

References in corpus (10)

• Compositional distributions and evolutionary processes for the near-Earth object population: Results from the MIT-Hawaii Near-Earth Object Spectroscopic Survey (MITHNEOS
• The Size Distributions of Asteroid Families in the SDSS Moving Object Catalog 4
• Asteroid family ages
• Main Belt Asteroids with WISE/NEOWISE: Near-Infrared Albedos
• Twenty years of SpeX: Accuracy limits of spectral slope measurements in asteroid spectroscopy
• Solar System Science with ESA Euclid
• Collisional family structure within the Nysa-Polana complex
• Adaptive optics and lightcurve data of asteroids: twenty shape models and information content analysis
• Against the biases in spins and shapes of asteroids
• Investigating Taxonomic Diversity within Asteroid Families through ATLAS Dual-Band Photometry

Cited by in corpus (11)

• The debiased compositional distribution of MITHNEOS: Global match between the near-Earth and main-belt asteroid populations and excess of D-type Near-Earth Objects
• Discovery of Super-Slow Rotating Asteroids with ATLAS and ZTF photometry
• Absolute colors and phase coefficients of asteroids
• Deficit of primitive compositions in binary asteroids and pairs
• Asteroid phase curves using sparse Gaia DR2 data and differential dense light curves
• The multi-wavelength phase curves of small bodies: Phase coloring
• Asteroids seen by JWST-MIRI: Radiometric Size, Distance and Orbit Constraints
• Asteroid spin-states of a 4 Gyr collisional family
• Mining archival data from wide-field astronomical surveys in search of near-Earth objects
• Asteroid Photometry with PIRATE: Optimizations and Techniques for Small Aperture Telescopes
• Uncertainties on Asteroid Albedos Determined by Thermal Modeling