Asteroid Light Curves
J. L. Africano (Rocketdyne Technical Services Co.), P. W. Kervin (Air Force Phillips Laboratory), J. V. Lambert (Boeing Space Operations Co.), D. L. Talent (Rocketdyne Technical Services Co.), E. F. Tedesco (Mission Research Corporation), A. F. Angara, D. Nishimoto, P. Sydney, V. Soo Hoo, D. O'Connell, A. Alday (Rocketdyne Technical Services Co.)
The Air Force Phillips Laboratory has been pursuing an active near-Earth
object (NEO) observing program for several years. To date, the focus of
this program has been to highly automate the positional observational
analysis in support of the Minor Planet Center and for follow-up of
discoveries by the Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT), Spacewatch, and
other search efforts. Several hundred new discoveries have been made in
the course of these follow-up observations. The program is being
expanded to include the collection of photometric lightcurves to support
NEO characterization studies including pole and shape determination.
Most recently, these observations have concentrated on NEO 1991 VH, an
Apollo asteroid with a double period suggesting that it may be a binary
object. We present the results from these observations.