Related papers: Asteroid Photometry with PIRATE: Optimizations and…
This article addresses the challenge of vision-based proximity navigation in asteroid exploration missions and on-orbit servicing. Traditional feature extraction methods struggle with the significant appearance variations of asteroids due…
Results of photometric observations of a small sample of selected Main Belt asteroids are presented. The obtained measurements can be used to achieve a better calibration of the asteroid photometric system $(H, G_1, G_2)$ adopted by the…
Context. Modern space telescopes are currently providing high-precision light curves for a large fraction of the sky, such that many new variable stars are being discovered. However, some stars have periodic variability with periods of…
Context. Earlier work suggests that slowly rotating asteroids should have higher thermal inertias than faster rotators because the heat wave penetrates deeper into the sub-surface. However, thermal inertias have been determined mainly for…
The Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) on the Spitzer Space Telescope currently offers the greatest potential for high-precision astrometry of faint mid-IR sources across arcminute-scale fields, which would be especially valuable for measuring…
We report on the status of the Tierras Observatory, a refurbished 1.3-m ultra-precise fully-automated photometer located at the F. L. Whipple Observatory atop Mt. Hopkins, Arizona. Tierras is designed to limit systematic errors, notably…
Knowledge of the interior density distribution of an asteroid can reveal its composition and constrain its evolutionary history. However, most asteroid observational techniques are not sensitive to interior properties. We investigate the…
We report a successful observation of a stellar occultation by asteroid (16583) Oersted, enabling a detailed physical characterization of its shape, spin state, and surface properties. Our goal is to determine the physical parameters of…
The ESA Euclid space telescope could observe up to 150 000 asteroids as a side product of its primary cosmological mission. Asteroids appear as trailed sources, that is streaks, in the images. Owing to the survey area of 15 000 square…
The STARE instrument is a small aperture, wide-field, CCD-based telescope that delivers high cadence time series photometry on roughly 40,000 stars in a typical field centered on the galactic plane. In a two-month observing run on a field,…
Orbital monitoring of exoplanetary and stellar systems is fundamental for analysing their architecture, dynamical stability and evolution, and mechanisms of formation. Current high-contrast extreme-adaptive optics imagers like SPHERE, GPI,…
Background. Relative astrometry at or below the micro-arcsec level with a 1m class space telescope has been repeatedly proposed as a tool for exo-planet detection and characterization, as well as for several topics at the forefront of…
A new method for the line-of-sight velocity estimation of a high-speed near-Earth object (asteroid, meteorite) is suggested. The method is based on use of fractional, one-half order derivative of a Doppler signal. The algorithm suggested is…
In order to avoid collisions with space debris, the near Earth orbit must be continuously scanned by either ground- or spaced-based facilities. For the low Earth orbit, radar telescopes are the workhorse for this task, especially due to…
The BRITE mission is a pioneering space project aimed at the long-term photometric monitoring of the brightest stars in the sky by means of a constellation of nano-satellites. Its main advantage is high photometric accuracy and time…
Thermal infrared observations are the most effective way to measure asteroid diameter and albedo for a large number of near-Earth objects. Major surveys like NEOWISE, NEOSurvey, ExploreNEOs, and NEOLegacy find a small fraction of high…
High-precision astrometry at the sub-microarcsecond level opens up a window to study Earth-like planets in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars, and to determine their masses. It thus promises to play an important role in exoplanet science…
Results from the TESS mission showed that previous studies strngly underestimated the number of slow rotators, revealing the importance of studying those asteroids. For most slowly rotating asteroids (P > 12), no spin and shape model is…
Photometry results of 32 asteroids are reported from only seven observing nights on only seven fields, consisting of 34.11 cumulative hours of observations. The data were obtained with a wide-field CCD (40.5'x27.3') mounted on a small,…
We report a detection of a faint near-Earth asteroid (NEA), which was done using our synthetic tracking technique and the CHIMERA instrument on the Palomar 200-inch telescope. This asteroid, with apparent magnitude of 23, was moving at 5.97…