The phase angle dependences of Reflectance on Asteroid (25143) Itokawa from the Hayabusa Spacecraft Multi-band Imaging Camera(AMICA)

  • Published : 2015.04.10

Abstract

Remote-sensing observation is one of the observation methods that provide valuable information, such as composition and surface physical conditions of solar system objects. The Hayabusa spacecraft succeeded in the first sample returning from a near-Earth asteroid, (25143) Itokawa. It has established a ground truth technique to connect between ordinary chondrite meteorites and S-type asteroids. One of the scientific observation instruments that Hayabusa carried, Asteroid Multi-band Imaging Camera(AMICA) has seven optical-near infrared filters (ul, b, v, w, x, p, and zs), taking more than 1400 images of Itokawa during the rendezvous phase. The reflectance of planetary body can provide valuable information of the surface properties, such as the optical aspect of asteroid surface at near zero phase angle (i.e. Sun-asteroid-observer's angle is nearly zero), light scattering on the surface, and surface roughness. However, only little information of the phase angle dependences of the reflectance of the asteroid is known so far. In this study, we investigated the phase angle dependences of Itokawa's surface to understand the surface properties in the solar phase angle of $0^{\circ}-40^{\circ}$ using AMICA images. About 700 images at the Hayabusa rendezvous phase were used for this study. In addition, we compared our result with those of several photometry models, Minnaert model, Lommel-Seeliger model, and Hapke model. At this conference, we focus on the AMICA's v-band data to compare with previous ground-based observation researches.

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