First Results Of The New Goldstone Delay-Doppler Radar Chirp Imaging System

Details First Results Of The New Goldstone Delay-Doppler Radar Chirp Imaging System First Results Of The New Goldstone Delay-Doppler Radar Chirp Imaging System

Oct 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010dps....42.5701s&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #42, #57.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.1080

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

We report the first results of a new delay-Doppler radar chirp waveform system at Goldstone, which improves the range resolution by a factor of five from 18.75-m to 3.75-m. We successfully tested the new system on near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) 2010 AL30 and 2009 UN3 in January and February 2010. 2010 AL30 was a target-of-opportunity observed only three days after its discovery by LINEAR on January 10. During 2.3 hours of observations, 2010 AL30 moved between 1.0 to 0.8 lunar distances from Earth en route to a close approach of only 0.34 lunar distances. Due to this short round-trip light-travel time, the observations were bistatic with transmissions at the 70-m DSS-14 antenna and reception at the 34-m DSS-13 antenna. 2010 AL30 has a very faint absolute magnitude of 27.2, suggesting a diameter of less than 20 meters. We imaged 2010 AL30 at resolutions as high as 3.75-m, which reveal a somewhat elongated shape roughly 15-m in diameter, making 2010 AL30 the smallest NEA spatially resolved at Goldstone to date. The sequence of images shows obvious rotation that is consistent with the period of about 9 minutes reported by W. Ryan. (pers. comm.). 2009 UN3 was discovered in October 2009 by the Siding Spring Survey and approached within 0.037 AU (14 lunar distances) on February 9. We observed 2009 UN3 monostatically at Goldstone on February 8 and 9. Due to its moderate SNRs, we used chirp imaging at 15-m and 30-m resolutions, and binary-phase-coded imaging with 37.5-m resolution. The images reveal an irregular, elongated object close to 700-m in diameter. For future research, the new 3.75-m-resolution capability at Goldstone offers significant scientific potential to reveal much more detailed surface features than previously possible, to yield more detailed 3D shapes, and to substantially improve NEA orbits and long-term orbit prediction.

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