High Resolution Asteroid Profile by Multi Chord Occultation Observations (Abstract)

Volume 37 number 2 (2009)

Scott Degenhardt

Abstract

(Abstract only) For millennia, man has observed celestial objects occulting other bodies and distant stars. We have used these celestial synchronicities to measure the properties of objects. On January 1, 1801, Italian astronomer Giusappe Piazzi discovered the first asteroid that would soon be named Ceres. To date 190,000 of these objects have been catalogued, but only a fraction of these have accurate measurements of their true size and shape. The International Occultation Timing Association (IOTA) currently facilitates the prediction and reduction of asteroidal occultations. By measuring the shadow cast on the earth by an asteroid during a stellar occultation one can directly measure the physical size, shape, and position in space of this body to accuracies orders of magnitudes better than the best ground-based adaptive optics telescope, and can provide verification to 3D inverted reflective light curve prediction models. Recent novel methods developed by IOTA, involving an individual making multiple observations through unattended remote observing stations, have made way for numerous chords of occultation measurement through a single body, yielding high resolution profiles of asteroid bodies. Methodology of how observing stations are deployed will be demonstrated, and results of some of these observations are presented as comparisons to their inverted light curve are shown.