A new three-parameter H, G1, G2 magnitude phase
function for asteroids
A. Cellino∗,1, I. Belskaya2, M. Delbò3, A. - C. Levasseur-Regourd4, K. Muinonen5,6, A. Penttilä5 and E. F. Tedesco7
- 1 INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Torino, strada Osservatorio 20, 10025 Pino Torinese, Italy.
- 2 Astronomical Institute of Kharkiv National University, 35 Sumska street, 61035 Kharkiv, Ukraine.
- 3 UMR 6202 Lab. Cassiopée, Obs. de la Côte d'Azur, BP 4229, 06304 Nice Cedex 4, France.
- 4 UPMC Univ. Paris 06, UMR 7620, BP3, 91371 Verrières, France.
- 5 Department of Physics, P.O. Box 64, FI-00014 U. Helsinki, Finland.
- 6 Finnish Geodetic Institute, Geodeetinrinne 2, P.O. Box 15, FI-02431 Masala, Finland.
- 7 Planetary Science Institute, 1700 E. Fort Lowell, Suite 106, Tucson, AZ 85719-2395, U.S.A.
We have developed a new three-parameter H, G1, G2 magnitude phase function for asteroids. The phase function is aimed at replacing the currently adopted two-parameter H, G phase function. We show that H, G1, G2 produces better fits of available magnitude - phase curves of well-observed asteroids. We show also that the new system can be conveniently reduced to a two-parameter H, G12 magnitude phase function, which allows us to derive better estimates of the absolute magnitudes of asteroids for which poorly-sampled magnitude phase curves are available.
- * Corresponding author