Related papers: Shape modeling technique KOALA validated by ESA Ro…
Aims. We determine the physical properties (spin state and shape) of asteroid (21) Lutetia, target of the ESA Rosetta mission, to help in preparing for observations during the flyby on 2010 July 10 by predicting the orientation of Lutetia…
The asteroid (21) Lutetia is the target of a planned close encounter by the Rosetta spacecraft in July 2010. To prepare for that flyby, Lutetia has been extensively observed by a variety of astronomical facilities. We used the Hubble Space…
We seek the best size estimates of the asteroid (21) Lutetia, the direction of its spin axis, and its bulk density, assuming its shape is well described by a smooth featureless triaxial ellipsoid, and to evaluate the deviations from this…
A wide observational campaign was carried out in 2004-2009 aimed to complete the ground-based investigation of Lutetia prior to the Rosetta fly-by in July 2010. We have obtained BVRI photometric and V-band polarimetric measurements over a…
CONTEXT: In July 2010 the ESA spacecraft Rosetta will fly-by the main belt asteroid 21 Lutetia. Several observations of this asteroid have been so far performed, but its surface composition and nature are still a matter of debate. For long…
The need for more accurate asteroid models is perhaps secondary to the need to measure their quality. The uncertainties of models' parameters propagate to quantities like volume or density -- the most important and informative properties of…
In the past decade, hundreds of asteroid shape models have been derived using the lightcurve inversion method. At the same time, a new framework of 3-D shape modeling based on the combined analysis of widely different data sources such as…
Asteroid shape inversion using photometric data has been a key area of study in planetary science and astronomical research.However, the current methods for asteroid shape inversion require extensive iterative calculations, making the…
One of the most accurate models currently used to represent the gravity field of irregular bodies is the polyhedral approach. In this model, the mass of the body is assumed to be homogeneous, which may not be true for a real object. The…
Asteroid modeling efforts in the last decade resulted in a comprehensive dataset of almost 400 convex shape models and their rotation states. This amount already provided a deep insight into physical properties of main-belt asteroids or…
The method of weighted least squares is widely used in parameter estimation problems such as asteroid orbit determination. A key difficulty is the treatment of observational uncertainties, especially when combining heterogeneous datasets…
The classical polyhedral model is one of the most accurate methods currently used to represent the gravitational field of irregularly shaped bodies. However, it assumes a homogeneous density distribution, which may not accurately reflect…
It is common practice nowadays to derive spins and 3D shapes of asteroids from the inversion of photometric light curves. However, this method requires a good number of photometric points and dedicated observing sessions. On the other hand,…
The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft passed by the main belt asteroid (21) Lutetia the 10th July 2010. With its ~100km size, Lutetia is one of the largest asteroids ever imaged by a spacecraft. During the flyby, the on-board…
Asteroid 21 Lutetia, visited by the Rosetta spacecraft, plays a crucial role in the reconstruction of primordial phases of planetary objects. Its high bulk density and its primitive chondritic crust (Weiss et al. 2011) suggest that Lutetia…
Optical lightcurves can be used for the shape and spin reconstruction of asteroids. Due to unknown albedo, these models are scale-free. When thermal infrared data are available, they can be used for scaling the shape models and for deriving…
Rotation properties (spin-axis direction and rotation period) and coarse shape models of asteroids can be reconstructed from their disk-integrated brightness when measured from various viewing geometries. These physical properties are…
The near-Earth asteroid (25143) Itokawa was characterised in great detail by the Japanese Hayabusa mission. We revisited the available thermal observations in the light of the true asteroid properties with the goal to evaluate the…
We present the first albedo determination of 2867 Steins, the asteroid target o f the Rosetta space mission together with 21 Lutetia. The data were obtained in polarimetric mode at the ESO-VLT telescope with the FORS1 instrument in the V…
Information about the spin state of asteroids is important for our understanding of the dynamical processes affecting them. However, spin properties of asteroids are known for only a small fraction of the whole population. To enlarge the…