Asteroid photometry

Abstract

Asteroid photometry has three major applications: providing clues about asteroid surface physical properties and compositions, facilitating photometric corrections, and helping design and plan groundbased and spacecraft observations. The most significant advances in asteroid photometry in the past decade were driven by spacecraft observations that collected spatially resolved imaging and spectroscopy data. In the meantime, laboratory measurements and theoretical developments are revealing controversies regarding the physical interpretations of models and model parameter values. We will review the new developments in asteroid photometry that have occurred over the past decade in the three complementary areas of observations, laboratory work, and theory. Finally, we will summarize and discuss the implications of recent findings.