THE EFFECT OF THE DUST SIZE DISTRIBUTION ON ASTEROID POLARIZATION

Journal Article · Tue Dec 15 04:00:00 EST 2009 · Astronomical Journal (New York, N.Y. Online)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-6256/138/6/1557; COUNTRY OF INPUT: INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY (IAEA)· OSTI ID:21301526

Masiero, Joseph ^[1]; Hartzell, Christine

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1. Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, 2680 Woodlawn Dr, Honolulu, HI 96822 (United States)

We have developed a theoretical description of how of an asteroid's polarization-phase curve will be affected by the removal of the dust from the surface due to a size-dependent phenomenon such as radiation pressure-driven escape of levitated particles. We test our calculations against new observations of four small (D {approx} 1 km) near-Earth asteroids (NEAs; (85236), (142348), (162900), and 2006 SZ{sub 217}) obtained with the Dual Beam Imaging Polarimeter on the University of Hawaii's 2.2 m telescope, as well as previous observations of (25143) Itokawa and (433) Eros. We find that the polarization of the light reflected from an asteroid is controlled by the mineralogical and chemical composition of the surface and is independent of dust particle. The relation between the slope of the polarization-phase curve beyond the inversion angle and the albedo of an asteroid is thus independent of the surface regolith size distribution and is valid for both Main Belt and NEAs.

• OSTI ID: 21301526
• Journal Information: Astronomical Journal (New York, N.Y. Online), Journal Name: Astronomical Journal (New York, N.Y. Online) Journal Issue: 6 Vol. 138; ISSN 1538-3881
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
ALBEDO
ASTEROIDS
CHEMICAL COMPOSITION
DUSTS
PLANETS
POLARIMETERS
POLARIZATION
RADIATION PRESSURE
TELESCOPES