Speaker
Description
Determining the size of an asteroid is scientifcally interesting, but also particularly relevant in the case of those objects that are considered as potential impactors: together with the distance to Earth, is one of the two criteria used to classify an asteroid as Potentially Hazardous. There are several ways to compute this physical property, some of them based on the acquisition of photometric and/or spectroscopic data at visible wavelengths. The most used one is time-series photometry (lightcurve) to compute asteroid’s H magnitude. Once the H magnitude is computed, spectroscopic/color observations provide asteroid’s taxonomy, i.e., its composition and consequently, its albedo. Albedo and H are used to infer diameter. The Observatorios de Canarias (OCAN), managed by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), include two observatories, El Roque de Los Muchachos (ORM), in the island of La Palma (MPC code 950) and El Teide (OT), in the island of Tenerife (MPC code 954). These two observatories host a very complete variety of telescopes and instruments (see Table 1), covering the wavelength range from the optical to the near-infrared (0.35 - 2.5 µm), and with sizes that go from the small Atlas-Teide telescope (0.6cm) to the large Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC, 10.4m), the world’s largest optical to near-infrared telescope. The Solar System Group of the IAC has access to all these facilities through regular competitive calls that are open every semester. In this talk we present the current observational efforts of the group in the caracterization of asteroids, focusing in the determination of their sizes.
