Asteroid models from combined sparse and dense photometric data

Abstract

We use the lightcurve inversion method to obtain rotation parameters and coarse shape models of selected asteroids. We combine sparse photometric data from the US Naval Observatory with ordinary lightcurves from the Uppsala Asteroid Photometric Catalogue and the Palmer Divide Observatory archive, and show that such combined data sets are in many cases sufficient to derive a model even if neither sparse photometry nor lightcurves can be used alone.

Keywords

• Asteroid
• models
• combined
• sparse
• dense
• photometric
• data