Related papers: Variegation and space weathering on asteroid 21 Lu…
Context. Sunlight scattered from the surface of an airless body is generally partially polarized, and the corresponding polarization state includes information about the scattering surface, such as albedo, surface grain sizes, composition,…
Intrinsic color profiles of a sample of nine Brightest Cluster Galaxies (BCGs) are recovered from the observed color profiles by evaluating spurious gradients introduced by errors in the determination of the sky levels and by different…
Be stars have generally been characterized by the emission lines in their spectra, and especially the time variability of those spectroscopic features. They are known to also exhibit photometric variability at multiple timescales, but have…
We present an extended optical spectropolarimetry of R CrB from 1998 January to 2003 September. The polarization was almost constant in the phase of maximum brightness, being consistent with past observations. We detected, however, temporal…
A recent study of hot (20,000 to 30,000 K) extreme horizontal branch (EHB) stars in globular clusters (GCs) has led to the discovery of their variability. It is suggested that this variability is driven by the projected rotation of magnetic…
The direction angle of twilight sky background polarization in the celestial sphere points far from solar vertical is found to depend on the ratio of single and multiple scattering contributions. The polarization direction behavior during…
Polarization phase-curve measurements provide a unique constraint on the surface properties of asteroids that are complementary to those from photometry and spectroscopy, and have led to the identification of the ``Barbarian'' asteroids as…
We provide evidence of consistency between the dynamical evolution of main belt asteroids and their color evolution due to space weathering. The dynamical age of an asteroid's surface \citep{bib.bot05a,bib.nes05} is the time since its last…
Using the Moon to occult the Sun, the Clementine spacecraft used its navigation cameras to map the inner zodiacal light at optical wavelengths over elongations of 3-30 degrees from the Sun. This surface brightness map is then used to infer…
The zeta ring is the innermost component of the Uranian ring system. It is of scientific interest because its morphology changed significantly between the Voyager 2 encounter in 1986 and subsequent Earth-based observations around 2007. It…
The radial velocity technique is currently used to classify transiting objects. While capable of identifying grazing binary eclipses, this technique cannot reliably identify blends, a chance overlap of a faint background eclipsing binary…
Over the past few years monitoring programs have shown ultra cool dwarfs (UCDs) to be photometrically variable. Of the 60 sources monitored in the field and some 120 monitored in clusters, about 40% show variability in both cases. For mid…
Spectrally blue (B-type) asteroids are rare, with the second discovered asteroid Pallas being the largest and most famous example. We conducted a focused, infrared spectroscopic survey of B-type asteroids to search for water-related…
Recent work has shown that the correlation between SDSS colors and optical albedo can be used to estimate asteroid sizes from optical data alone. We revisit a correlation between SDSS colors and optical albedo for asteroids, with the albedo…
Debris disk stars are good targets for high contrast imaging searches for planetary systems, since debris disks have been shown to have a tentative correlation with giant planets. We selected 20 stars identified as debris disk hosts by the…
A comprehensive multicolor survey was undertaken to investigate global optical properties of Abell clusters of galaxies. This survey was christened the "Low-Redshift Cluster Optical Survey" (LOCOS). LOCOS was devised to search for patterns…
Stars with B[e] phenomenon comprise a very diverse group of objects in a different evolutionary status. These objects show common spectral characteristics, including presence of Balmer lines in emission, forbidden lines, and strong infrared…
(ABRIDGED) In previous work, two platforms have been developed for testing computer-vision algorithms for robotic planetary exploration (McGuire et al. 2004b,2005; Bartolo et al. 2007). The wearable-computer platform has been tested at…
Context. There exist few variability studies of stars in the region in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram between the A and B-star pulsational instability strips. With the aid of the high precision continuous measurements of the CoRoT space…
Context. The object 2012 DA14 is a near-Earth asteroid with a size of several tens of meters. It had approached closely the Earth on 15 February, 2013 UT, providing an opportunity for precise measurements of this tiny asteroid. Aims. The…