Radar Polarimetric Studies of Near-Earth Asteroid Surface Properties

Details Radar Polarimetric Studies of Near-Earth Asteroid Surface Properties Radar Polarimetric Studies of Near-Earth Asteroid Surface Properties

Oct 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007dps....39.2004c&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #39, #20.04; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.448

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

We use a radar polarimetric technique to study the surface physical properties of a small sample of Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs), to search for evidence of regolith cover, and to correlate the radar polarimetric properties with size and shape. In radar experiments, an analysis of the degree of linear polarization in the received echo can be used to investigate whether there is sub-surface scattering of the incident wave, which would imply the presence of a low dielectric constant surface covering such as a regolith. If a circularly polarized radar wave refracts into a surface that is smooth at wavelength scales and is backscattered toward the radar by embedded scatterers or by an underlying structure, the returned radar echo will have a net linearly polarized component (it will be elliptically polarized). This technique has been applied to 1999 JM8, 4179 Toutatis, and 2004 VG64 (Carter et al., 38th DPS, 2006). Our sample now includes the recently observed objects 2006 VV2 and 2006 AM4 as well as archival asteroid targets selected from past NEA observations at Arecibo Observatory. We will present current results from the new data and reprocessed archival data. This research is funded through the NASA Planetary Astronomy program. Arecibo Observatory is part of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, which is operated by Cornell University under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation.

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