Asteroid phase curves from combined sparse and dense photometry

We show preliminary results for a new phase curve computation method capable of combining sparse relative photometrc data coming from sky surveys with dense differential measurements. It allows to obtain phase curves and derive their parameters for more asteroids than using a traditional approach.

Combining dense differential ground-based observations obtained at Astronomical Observatory Institute of Adam Mickiewicz Univeristy in Poznań with sparse but absolute Gaia photometry from Gaia DR2 catalogue we were able to perform accurate amplitude lightcurve corrections and derive phase-slope parameter β for each of 31 oppositions of 24 asteroids which were chosen by our selection criteria.

In future works we plan to combine the data from other publicly available sources such as ATLAS, K2, LSST, TESS, VISTA and others, and create a large photometric database containing absolute, relative and differential photometry.

Acknowledgments

This work has been supported by grant No. 2017/25/B/ST9/00740 from the National Science Centre, Poland.