The Gaia Mission: Expected Applications to Asteroid Science

Mignard, F.; Cellino, A.; Muinonen, K.; Tanga, P.; Delbò, M.; Dell’Oro, A.; Granvik, Mikael; Hestroffer, Daniel; Mouret, Serge; Thuillot, W.; Virtanen, Jenni

doi:10.1007/s11038-007-9221-z

Cited by 96 publications

(82 citation statements)

References 34 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…As has been shown by Kaasalainen et al (2004Kaasalainen et al ( ) orĎurech et al (2005 and demonstrated on real targets byĎurech et al (2009), physical models of asteroids can also be derived from photometry that only sparsely samples brightness variations. This kind of photometric data will be provided by all-sky surveys like Pan-STARRS (Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System), LSST (Large Synoptic Survey Telescope), or Gaia (Mignard et al 2007), and we expect an avalanche of new asteroid models in the next decade.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

DAMIT: a database of asteroid models

Ďurech

Sidorin

Kaasalainen

2010

A&A

249

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Context. Apart from a few targets that were directly imaged by spacecraft, remote sensing techniques are the main source of information about the basic physical properties of asteroids, such as the size, the spin state, or the spectral type. The most widely used observing technique -time-resolved photometry -provides us with data that can be used for deriving asteroid shapes and spin states. In the past decade, inversion of asteroid lightcurves has led to more than a hundred asteroid models. In the next decade, when data from all-sky surveys are available, the number of asteroid models will increase. Combining photometry with, e.g., adaptive optics data produces more detailed models. Aims. We created the Database of Asteroid Models from Inversion Techniques (DAMIT) with the aim of providing the astronomical community access to reliable and up-to-date physical models of asteroids -i.e., their shapes, rotation periods, and spin axis directions. Models from DAMIT can be used for further detailed studies of individual objects, as well as for statistical studies of the whole set. Methods. Most DAMIT models were derived from photometric data by the lightcurve inversion method. Some of them have been further refined or scaled using adaptive optics images, infrared observations, or occultation data. A substantial number of the models were derived also using sparse photometric data from astrometric databases.Results. At present, the database contains models of more than one hundred asteroids. For each asteroid, DAMIT provides the polyhedral shape model, the sidereal rotation period, the spin axis direction, and the photometric data used for the inversion. The database is updated when new models are available or when already published models are updated or refined. We have also released the C source code for the lightcurve inversion and for the direct problem (updates and extensions will follow).

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

DAMIT: a database of asteroid models

Ďurech

Sidorin

Kaasalainen

2010

A&A

249

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…But the data improvement will be considerable, both in terms of quantity (observations are expected for ∼300.000 asteroids, [29]) and quality (the photometric accuracy is estimated to be ∼0.01 mag for asteroids up to 18 magnitude, and ∼0.03 mag up to 20 magnitude [7], [8]). As a result of this enormous amount of new data, asteroid models for at least 10.000 objects are expected.…”

Section: Shape Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Shape Models and Physical Properties of Asteroids

Santana-Ros¹,

Dudziński²,

Bartczak³

2016

Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Despite the large amount of high quality data generated in recent space encounters with asteroids, the majority of our knowledge about these objects comes from ground based observations. Asteroids travelling in orbits that are potentially hazardous for the Earth form an especially interesting group to be studied. In order to predict their orbital evolution, it is necessary to investigate their physical properties. This paper briefly describes the data requirements and different techniques used to solve the lightcurve inversion problem. Although photometry is the most abundant type of observational data, models of asteroids can be obtained using various data types and techniques. We describe the potential of radar imaging and stellar occultation timings to be combined with disk-integrated photometry in order to reveal information about physical properties of asteroids.

show abstract

“…The range of latitudes around zero for which the inversion is presenting a lower reliability is getting wider the smaller the number of measurements is. Still, the good news is that, on the average, main-belt asteroids will be detected on the Gaia focal plane for a number of times between 60 and 70 during the five-year operational lifetime of the mission (Mignard et al 2007). Therefore the number of problematic asteroids for which Gaia photometric inversion might produce wrong solutions will represent a small part (although still several hundreds) of the hundreds of thousands of asteroids observed.…”

Section: Influence Of the Number Of Measurementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Testing the inversion of asteroids’ Gaia photometry combined with ground-based observations

Santana-Ros¹,

Bartczak²,

Michałowski³

et al. 2015

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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 Côte 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 σ 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.

show abstract

The Gaia Mission: Expected Applications to Asteroid Science

Abstract: Earth Moon and Planets, 101, pp. 97-125, http://dx.doi.org./10.1007/s11038-007-9221-zInternational audienc

Cited by 96 publications

References 34 publications

DAMIT: a database of asteroid models

DAMIT: a database of asteroid models

Shape Models and Physical Properties of Asteroids

Testing the inversion of asteroids’ Gaia photometry combined with ground-based observations

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About