We have performed a spectroscopic survey of 19 D-type asteroids. Comparison with previous photometry shows excellent agreement. Although the majority have similar colors to cometary nuclei, no cometary emission bands were present in any of the spectra. Absorption bands sporadically appearing were apparently due to stellar objects, and no features inherent to the asteroids were observed

Dahlgren, Mats

Fitzsimmons, Alan

Lagerkvist, C.-I.

Magnusson, Per

Williams, I. P.

English

NASA Technical Reports Server

Asteroids, Comets, Meteors 1991, pp. 191-194
191
Lunar and Planetary Institute, Hou,ton, 1992 ,//--7 / 0 _ ? _
N 9 3 71!%:t 5 a
SPECTROSCOPY OF D=TYPE ASTEROIDS
A. Fitzsimmons, Dept. of Physics, The Queen's University of Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN,
Northern Ireland.
M. Dahlgren and C. -I. Lagerkvist, Astronomiska Observatoriet, Box 515, S-751 20 Uppsala,
Sweden.
P. Magnusson and I. P. Williams, School of Mathematical Sciences, Queen Mary and West-
field College, London E1 4NS, England.
ABSTRACT
We have performed a spectroscopic survey of 19 D-type asteroids. Comparison with previ-
ous photometry shows excellent agreement. Although the majority have similar colours to
cometary nuclei, no cometary emission bands were present in any of the spectra. Absorption
bands sporadically appearing were apparently due to stellar objects, and no features inherent
to the asteroids were observed.
INTRODUCTION
The D-type asteroids are one of the most interesting groups of objects in the solar system. It
was suggested over a decade ago by Gradie and Veverka (1980) that their reddish colouration
stems from complex hydrocarbons covering their surfaces. Thus such objects are expected
to be among the most primitive of asteroids available for study. Their general low albedos
give them an uncanny resemblence to cometary nuclei, whose optical properties they share
(e.g. Weissman et al., 1989). Thus we have embarked on a spectroscopic survey of asteroids
classified as D-type in the taxonomy of Barucci et al. (1987), who used both IRAS measured
albedos and the ECAS data of Zellner et al. (1985) to identify such objects.
OBSERVATIONS AND REDUCTION
PR_.O!NG
All spectra were obtained using the Faint Object Spectrograph on the 4.2m William Herschel
Telescope at the Observatory de Rogue de los Muchachos, La Palma. The spectrograph is
a fixed-format instrument with a 150 lines mm -1 plane transmission grating, recording data
in two spectral orders covering wavelengths 3400-4900/_ and 4800-9600/_. The detector is a
cooled coated 400×590 pixel GEC CCD, giving resolutions of 4.3/_ pixe1-1 and 8.6/_ pixe1-1
respectively. Both detector and spectrograph are permanently mounted at the cassegrain
focus of the telelscope, giving great stability to the system. All targets were observed with
P,_QE BLA_'K NOT ,m.! p_)
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19930009969 2020-03-17T07:32:24+00:00Z
192 Asteroids, Comets, Meteors 1991
a slit of dimensions 2 arcsec by 20 arcsec, and placed with the long axis at the parallactic
angle to minimise the effects of atmospheric dispersion. The asteroids were observed on two
consecutive observing runs, on the nights of 8th December 1990 and 7th-8th March 1991.
Observations of the solar analogues 16 Cyg B and Hyades 64 were also performed to allow
production of reflectance spectra. Details of data reduction will be given in a forthcoming
paper (Fitzsimmons et al., 1991, in preperation).
RESULTS
Reflectance spectra were produced in an analogous manner to Luu and Jewitt (1990). How-
ever, our resulting spectra were normalised at 5500Ji to facilitate comparison with previous
photometry published in the ECAS and TRIAD databases (Zellner et al., 1985; Chapman
and Gaffey, 1979). The agreement is generally excellent as can be seen from figure 1. In none
of the asteroids did we detect any sign Of the cometary emission that would be expected from
a weakly active cometary nucleus. This should not be surprising though, as the majority of
our targets lie in stable main-belt orbits.
©
¢.)
¢D
C_
1.5
_-t , I TI I, I ' ' r ' 1 1_1 I I I i I '1 t i ' t I t i_
1284 LATVIA
i
.5 _--- 1
0 __L_[ I I I i I i i l_t_l , i I i [. J-.-X 1 i I i I I I 1 i i
4000 5000 6000 7000
Wavelength
8000 9000
Figure 1. Reflectance spectrum of 1284 Latvia, showing good agreement with both ECAS
data (solid points) and TRIAD data (open points)._
Spectra of 1583 Antilochus and 2260 Neoptolemusdid show transient absorption features in
their reflectancespectra_similar to those suspected on other asteroids_ (Fitzsimmons et al.,
1990). Two spectra of Neoptolemus taken 90 minutes apart on 8th March 1991 are shown in
figure 2. A very similar pair of discrepant spectra were also obtained for Antilochus. Recent
photometry by Binzel (R.B.Binzel, private communication) indicates that both of these
Asteroids, Comets, Meteors 1991 193
CD
o
_5
0
CD
objects have a rotation period of at least 12 hours. A variation due to surface properties
would not thus be expected with a timescale of 90 minutes. Comparison of the abnormalo
spectra with the spectra of K0-K4 stars as presented by Margon (1991) shows a very similar
set of absorption features and a possibility is therefore contamination by such a star being
present in
3
2
2260 NEOPTOLEMUS
4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000
Wavelength
Figure 2. Spectra of 2260 Neoptolemus obtained on 8th March 1991. The upper spectrum
has been shifted upwards by unity to ease comparison. Photometric points are taken from
the ECAS database.
the slit of the spectrograph. However there was no evidence for such a star being present in
the TV finder screen on any of the exposures and neither was there evidence for a secondary
source in the original two-dimensional image. We also note that Jewitt and Luu (1990)
possibly observed a similar feature at about 5100/_. in the Trojan asteroid 1988byl. If
contamination turns out to be the correct interpretation, it shows that more care than has
hitherto been taken by observers is necessary to eliminate overlapping stars. Inspection of
the field and of the CCD chip before reduction may not be adequate.
194 Asteroids, Comets, Meteors 1991
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
AF and PM acknowledge support from the Science and Engineering Research Council. CIL
and MD acknowledge support from the Swedish Research Council. The authors would like
to thank the staff of the Observatorio de Roque de los Muchachos on La Palma for their
help and guidance during the observations.
References
Barucci A., Capria T., Coradini A., and Fulchignoni M. (1987) Classification of asteroids
using G-mode analysis, icarus, 72, 304-324.
Chapman C.R., and Gaffey M.J. (1979) Spectral reflectances of the asteroids. In Asteroids
(T. Gehrels, ed.), pp. 1064-1089. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
Gradie J., and Veverka J. (1980) The composition of the Trojan asteroids. Nature, 283,
842840- . - -
Fitzsimmons A., Williams I. P., Lagerkvist C. -I., and Dahlgren M. (1990) Spectra of six
asteroids obtained at La Palma. Mon. Not. R. astr. Soc., 247, 26p-29p.
Jewitt D. C., and Luu J.X. (1990) CCD spectra of asteroids. II. The Trojans as spectral
analogues of cometary nuclei. Astron. J., 100, 933-950.
Luu J. X., and Jewitt D. C- (1990) CCD spectra of asteroids. I. Near-Earth and 3:1 resonance
asteroids. Astron. J., 99, 1985-2011.
Margon, B. (1991). In A Display Atlas of Stellar Spectra. Dept. of Astronomy, University
Of Washington, Seattle.
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Zellner B., Tholen D. J., and Tedesco E. F. (1985) The eight-color asteroid survey: results
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