Asteroid phase curves using sparse Gaia DR2 data and differential dense light curves

Abstract

The amount of sparse asteroid photometry being gathered by both space- and ground-based surveys is growing exponentially. This large volume of data poses a computational challenge owing to both the large amount of information to be processed and the new methods needed to combine data from different sources (e.g. obtained by different techniques, in different bands, and having different random and systematic errors). The main goal of this work is to develop an algorithm capable of merging sparse and dense data sets, both relative and differential, in preparation for asteroid observations originating from, for example, Gaia, TESS, ATLAS, LSST, K2, VISTA, and many other sources. We present a novel method to obtain asteroid phase curves by combining sparse photometry and differential ground-based photometry. In the traditional approach, the latter cannot be used for phase curves. Merging those two data types allows for the extraction of phase-curve information for a growing number of objects. Our method is validated for 26 sample asteroids observed by the Gaia mission.

arXiv comment10 pages, 7 figures (supplementary material: 20 pages, 58 figures)

References in corpus (17)

• Gaia Data Release 2. Summary of the contents and survey properties
• The Gaia mission
• Phase reddening on near-Earth asteroids: Implications for mineralogical analysis, space weathering and taxonomic classification
• Absolute magnitudes and slope parameters for 250,000 asteroids observed by Pan-STARRS PS1 - preliminary results
• Gaia Data Release 2: Observations of solar system objects
• Asteroid lightcurves from the Palomar Transient Factory survey: Rotation periods and phase functions from sparse photometry
• Asteroid phase curves from ATLAS dual-band photometry
• Asteroid taxonomic signatures from photometric phase curves
• Asteroid models reconstructed from ATLAS photometry
• Photometric survey, modelling, and scaling of long-period and low-amplitude asteroids
• Against the biases in spins and shapes of asteroids
• Thermal properties of slowly rotating asteroids: Results from a targeted survey
• The determination of asteroid H and G phase function parameters using GAIA DR2
• Properties of slowly rotating asteroids from the Convex Inversion Thermophysical Model
• Volume uncertainty assessment method of asteroid models from disk-integrated visual photometry
• Photometry of selected outer main belt asteroids
• Photometry and model of near-Earth asteroid 2021 DW1 from one apparition

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Reconstruction of asteroid spin states from Gaia DR3 photometry
• Predictions for Sparse Photometry of Jupiter-Family Comet Nuclei in the LSST Era