Detection of Contact Binaries Using Sparse High Phase Angle Lightcurves

Details Detection of Contact Binaries Using Sparse High Phase Angle Lightcurves Detection of Contact Binaries Using Sparse High Phase Angle Lightcurves

2007-11-14

arxiv.org/abs/0711.2288v1

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

4 pages, 4 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in ApJL

Scientific paper

10.1086/526454

We show that candidate contact binary asteroids can be efficiently identified from sparsely sampled photometry taken at phase angles >60deg. At high phase angle, close/contact binary systems produce distinctive lightcurves that spend most of the time at maximum or minimum (typically >1mag apart) brightness with relatively fast transitions between the two. This means that a few (~5) sparse observations will suffice to measure the large range of variation and identify candidate contact binary systems. This finding can be used in the context of all-sky surveys to constrain the fraction of contact binary near-Earth objects. High phase angle lightcurve data can also reveal the absolute sense of the spin.

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