Multicolor Photometry of Small Bodies of the Solar System: Performance Potential at the Robophot Telescope
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icolor Photometry of Small Bodies of the Solar System: Performance Potential at the Robophot Telescope A. E. Potoskueva, *, V. V. Busarevb, V. V. Krushinskiia, E. D. Kuznetsova, A. A. Popova, and A. M. Soboleva aUral
Federal University, Yekaterinburg, 620002 Russia Moscow State University, Moscow, 119992 Russia *e-mail: [email protected]
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Received September 2, 2019; revised February 26, 2020; accepted April 30, 2020
Abstract—We consider prospects for investigating asteroids with the multicolor photometric method at the Robophot telescope—a robotic telescope of the Dall–Kirkham system with a 0.6-m primary mirror and a focal length of 4.2 m. It is equipped with a three-channel photometer with the g', r', and i' filters of the SDSS photometric system, and the field of view is 20′. The use of a three-channel photometer in observations of small bodies will make it possible to construct multicolor light curves without phase delays. Diagrams of the r' – i' and g' – r' color indices will provide the means of classifying the C- and S-type asteroids. From the highaccuracy light curves, the rotation parameters of asteroids can be determined, for which it is necessary to take the Yarkovsky effect into account correctly. The results of multicolor photometric observations at the Robophot telescope will allow for solving complex scientific problems related to the studies of the physical and dynamic evolution of small bodies in the Solar System. Keywords: multichannel photometer, light curve, asteroids, taxonomy, color indices DOI: 10.1134/S003809462005007X
INTRODUCTION Observations of the Solar System asteroids, which were formed from the matter of the same protoplanetary nebula but vary in composition due to different formation conditions, make it possible to distinguish groups of objects among them with similar spectral characteristics. In recent decades, several taxonomic systems of asteroids have been developed which are based on separating objects by color indices (in the photometric system accepted) or spectra of objects (Binzel et al., 2019). When estimating the composition of asteroids, it is difficult to directly acquire their spectra mainly due to the faint magnitude of most objects, since their sizes are small and/or the albedos are low. However, for a substantial number of the bodies, this problem may be solved with multiband photometry. Moreover, from observations of asteroids with several wideband optical filters, light curves of the objects may be constructed, which allows their geometric and rotational characteristics to be determined (Pravec et al., 2019). The color index variations depending on the rotation phase of an asteroid may suggest that its surface is photometrically inhomogeneous, which is typical of objects with surfaces that experienced relatively recent alterations (Li et al., 2015). In this paper, we consider the potential of the multicolor photometry of asteroids to be carried out with
the Robophot telescope at the Kourovka Astronomical Observatory (KAO) of the Ural Federal Univer
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