Asteroid Photometry with PIRATE: Optimizations and Techniques for Small Aperture Telescopes
arXiv:2107.04390 · doi:10.1088/1538-3873/ac0f8c
Abstract
Small aperture telescopes provide the opportunity to conduct high frequency, targeted observations of near-Earth Asteroids that are not feasible with larger facilities due to highly competitive time allocation requirements. Observations of asteroids with these types of facilities often focus on rotational brightness variations rather than longer-term phase angle dependent variations (phase curves) due to the difficulty of achieving high precision photometric calibration. We have developed an automated asteroid light curve extraction and calibration pipeline for images of moving objects from the 0.43 m Physics Innovations Robotic Telescope Explorer (PIRATE). This allows for the frequency and quality of observations required to construct asteroid phase curves. Optimisations in standard data reduction procedures are identified that may allow for similar small aperture facilities, constructed from commercially available/off-the-shelf components, to improve image and subsequent data quality. A demonstration of the hardware and software capabilities is expressed through observation statistics from a 10 month observing campaign, and through the photometric characterisation of near-Earth Asteroids 8014 (1990 MF) and 19764 (2000 NF5).
arXiv comment41 pages, 15 figures, 2 tables, 1 appendix. Accepted for publication in PASP
References in corpus (22)
- SciPy 1.0--Fundamental Algorithms for Scientific Computing in Python
- Array Programming with NumPy
- Astropy: A Community Python Package for Astronomy
- emcee: The MCMC Hammer
- Astrometry.net: Blind astrometric calibration of arbitrary astronomical images
- The Pan-STARRS1 Photometric System
- astroquery: An Astronomical Web-Querying Package in Python
- The Pan-STARRS1 Database and Data Products
- Phase reddening on near-Earth asteroids: Implications for mineralogical analysis, space weathering and taxonomic classification
- Physical Characterization of Warm Spitzer-observed Near-Earth Objects
- Rotation of Cometary Nuclei: New Lightcurves and an Update of the Ensemble Properties of Jupiter-Family Comets
- Asteroid phase curves from ATLAS dual-band photometry
- Asteroid taxonomic signatures from photometric phase curves
- Surface composition and taxonomic classification of a group of near-Earth and Mars-crossing asteroids
- Precise astrometry and diameters of asteroids from occultations -- a data-set of observations and their interpretation
- Full orbital solution for the binary system in the northern Galactic disc microlensing event Gaia16aye
- PIRATE: A Remotely-Operable Telescope Facility for Research and Education
- Gaia18aen: First symbiotic star discovered by Gaia
- A survey for variable young stars with small telescopes: II -- Mapping a protoplanetary disk with stable structures at 0.15 AU
- Photometric study for near-Earth asteroid (155140) 2005 UD
- Spin Change of Asteroid 2012 TC4 probably by Radiation Torques
- Monitoring of transiting exoplanets and their host stars with small aperture telescopes