Related papers: Asteroid Photometry with PIRATE: Optimizations and…
Searching for transits provides a very promising technique for finding close-in extra-solar planets. Transiting planets present the advantage of allowing one to determine physical properties such as mass and radius unambiguously. The…
Automated asteroid detection routines set requirements on the number of detections, signal-to-noise ratio, and the linearity of the expected motion in order to balance completeness, reliability, and time delay after data acquisition when…
Tens of thousands of sparse-in-time lightcurves from astrometric projects are publicly available. We investigate these data and use them in the lightcurve inversion method to derive new asteroid models. By having a greater number of models…
Photometric measurements allow the determination of an asteroid's absolute magnitude, which often represents the sole means to infer its size. Photometric observations can be obtained in a variety of filters that can be unique to a specific…
We present an approach for utilizing astrometric orbit information to improve the yield of planetary images and spectra from a follow-on direct detection mission. This approach is based on the notion-strictly hypothetical-that if a…
We present the first results of an asteroid photo--polarimetry program started at Asiago--Cima Ekar Observatory. The aim of our survey is to estimate diversity in polarimetric properties of asteroids belonging to different taxonomic and…
In the absence of dense photometry for a large population of Near Earth Objects (NEOs), the best method of obtaining a shape distribution comes from sparse photometry and partial lightcurves. We have used 867 partial lightcurves obtained by…
Physical studies of asteroids depend on an availability of lightcurve data. Targets that are easy to observe and analyse naturally have more data available, so their synodic periods are confirmed from multiple sources. Also, thanks to…
Currently, over forty transiting planets have been discovered by ground-based photometric surveys, and space-based missions like Kepler and CoRoT are expected to detect hundreds more. Follow-up photometric observations from the ground will…
We present the first results of our survey of asteroid polarization-phase curves in the near-infrared J and H bands using the WIRC+Pol instrument on the Palomar 200-inch telescope. We confirm through observations of standard stars that…
Asteroid sizes can be directly measured by observing occultations of stars by asteroids. When there are enough observations across the path of the shadow, the asteroid's projected silhouette can be reconstructed. Asteroid shape models…
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…
We describe digital tracking, a method for asteroid searches that greatly increases the sensitivity of a telescope to faint unknown asteroids. It has been previously used to detect faint Kuiper Belt objects using the Hubble Space Telescope…
Astronomers working with faint targets will benefit greatly from improved image quality on current and planned ground-based telescopes. At present, most adaptive optic systems are targeted at the highest resolution with bright guide stars.…
This paper is to introduce an online tool for the prediction of exoplanet transit light curves. Small telescopes can readily capture exoplanet transits under good weather conditions when the combination of a bright star and a large…
Asteroids detection is a very important research field that received increased attention in the last couple of decades. Some major surveys have their own dedicated people, equipment and detection applications, so they are discovering Near…
The Planet Hunting and Asteroseismology Explorer Spectrophotometer, PHASES, is a concept for a space-borne instrument to obtain flux calibrated spectra and measure micro-magnitude photometric variations of nearby stars. The science drivers…
We describe a new iteration method to estimate asteroid coordinates, which is based on the subpixel Gaussian model of a discrete object image. The method operates by continuous parameters (asteroid coordinates) in a discrete observational…
The available set of spin and shape modelled asteroids is strongly biased against slowly rotating targets and those with low lightcurve amplitudes. As a consequence of these selection effects, the current picture of asteroid spin axis…
Understanding the dynamical evolution of asteroids through the secular Yarkovsky effect requires the determination of many physical properties, including the rotation period. We propose a method aimed at obtaining a robust determination of…