Standard Triaxial Ellipsoid Asteroids from AO Observations

Physics – Optics

Scientific paper

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Scientific paper

As part of our study of resolved asteroids using adaptive optics (AO) on large telescopes (>8; m), we have identified several that can serve as Standard Triaxial Ellipsoid Asteroids (STEAs), suitable for radar and thermo-physical calibration. These objects are modeled well as triaxial ellipsoids, having: 1) small uncertainties on their three dimensions as determined with AO; 2) rotational poles well determined from both lightcurves and AO; and 3) good sidereal periods from lightcurves. Although AO allows the opportunity to find an asteroid's dimensions and rotational pole in one night, we have developed a method to combine AO observations from different oppositions to pool into a global solution. The apparent orientation and sizes of STEAs can be predicted to within a few degrees and a few km over decades. Currently, we consider 511 Davida, 52 Europa, 2 Pallas, and 15 Eunomia as STEAs. Asteroids that are not well modeled as ellipsoids, clearly showing departures from ellipsoid figures in AO images, include 129 Antigone and 41 Daphne. We will show movies of images and models of these asteroids.

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