269 research outputs found
Testing the inversion of asteroids' Gaia photometry combined with ground-based observations
We investigated the reliability of the genetic algorithm which will be used
to invert the photometric measurements of asteroids collected by the European
Space Agency Gaia mission. To do that, we performed several sets of simulations
for 10 000 asteroids having different spin axis orientations, rotational
periods and shapes. The observational epochs used for each simulation were
extracted from the Gaia mission simulator developed at the Observatoire de la
C\^{o}te d'Azur, while the brightness was generated using a Z-buffer standard
graphic method. We also explored the influence on the inversion results of
contaminating the data set with Gaussian noise with different values.
The research enabled us to determine a correlation between the reliability of
the inversion method and the asteroid's pole latitude. In particular, the
results are biased for asteroids having quasi-spherical shapes and low pole
latitudes. This effect is caused by the low lightcurve amplitude observed under
such circumstances, as the periodic signal can be lost in the photometric
random noise when both values are comparable, causing the inversion to fail.
Such bias might be taken into account when analysing the inversion results, not
to mislead it with physical effects such as non-gravitational forces. Finally,
we studied what impact on the inversion results has combining a full lightcurve
and Gaia photometry collected simultaneously. Using this procedure we have
shown that it is possible to reduce the number of wrong solutions for asteroids
having less than 50 data points. The latter will be of special importance for
planning ground-based observations of asteroids aiming to enhance the
scientific impact of Gaia on Solar system science.Comment: Accepted in MNRA
Absolute properties of the main-sequence eclipsing binary FM Leo
First spectroscopic and new photometric observations of the eclipsing binary
FM Leo are presented. The main aims were to determine orbital and stellar
parameters of two components and their evolutionary stage. First spectroscopic
observations of the system were obtained with DDO and PST spectrographs. The
results of the orbital solution from radial velocity curves are combined with
those derived from the light-curve analysis (ASAS-3 photometry and
supplementary observations of eclipses with 1 m and 0.35 m telescopes) to
derive orbital and stellar parameters. JKTEBOP, Wilson-Devinney binary
modelling codes and a two-dimensional cross-correlation (TODCOR) method were
applied for the analysis. We find the masses to be M_1 = 1.318 0.007 and
M_2 = 1.287 0.007 M_sun, the radii to be R_1 = 1.648 0.043 and R_2
= 1.511 0.049 R_sun for primary and secondary stars, respectively. The
evolutionary stage of the system is briefly discussed by comparing physical
parameters with current stellar evolution models. We find the components are
located at the main sequence, with an age of about 3 Gyr.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, to appear in MNRA
Asteroids seen by JWST-MIRI: Radiometric Size, Distance and Orbit Constraints
Infrared measurements of asteroids are crucial for the determination of
physical and thermal properties of individual objects, and for the
understanding of the small-body populations in the solar system as a whole. But
standard radiometric methods can only be applied if the orbit of an object is
known, hence its position at the time of the observation. We present MIRI
observations of the outer-belt asteroid 10920 and an unknown object, detected
in all 9 MIRI bands in close proximity to 10920. We developed a new method
"STM-ORBIT" to interpret the multi-band measurements without knowing the
object's true location. The method leads to a confirmation of radiometric
size-albedo solution for 10920 and puts constraints on the asteroid's location
and orbit in agreement with its true orbit. Groundbased lightcurve observations
of 10920, combined with Gaia data, indicate a very elongated object (a/b >=
1.5), with a spin-pole at (l, b) = (178{\deg}, 81{\deg}), and a rotation period
of 4.861191 h. A thermophysical study leads to a size of 14.5 - 16.5 km, a
geometric albedo between 0.05 and 0.10, and a thermal inertia in the range 9 to
35 Jm-2s-0.5K-1. For the newly discovered MIRI object, the STM-ORBIT method
revealed a size of 100-230 m. The new asteroid must be on a very
low-inclination orbit and it was located in the inner main-belt region during
JWST observations. A beaming parameter {\eta} larger than 1.0 would push the
size even below 100 meter, a main-belt regime which escaped IR detections so
far. These kind of MIRI observations can therefore contribute to formation and
evolution studies via classical size-frequency studies which are currently
limited to objects larger than about one kilometer in size. We estimate that
MIRI frames with pointings close to the ecliptic and only short integration
times of a few seconds will always include a few asteroids, most of them will
be unknown objects.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figures, 4 tables, accepted for A&A publication on Nov
22, 202
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