Polarimetric properties of asteroids in the near-infrared
- 1Caltech/IPAC, Pasadena, United States of America (jmasiero@ipac.caltech.edu)
- 2University of Helsinki, Finland
- 3University of California Santa Cruz, USA
- 4University of California Santa Barbara, USA
We present first results from a polarimetric survey of asteroids in the near-infrared J and H bands (1.25 and 1.65 microns, respectively). This survey has been enabled by the newly commissioned WIRC-Pol instrument on the Palomar 5 m telescope. WIRC-Pol simultaneously senses the four linear polarization components from the target, while using a half-wave plate to beam swap between them. This setup allows us to obtain bandpass polarimetric accuracies better than 0.1% for our targets. WIRC-Pol also obtains low resolution spectra of each Stokes component, allowing us to investigate the spectropolarimetric properties of our targets as a function of phase. We show polarimetric phase curves for objects that have been sampled at multiple phases, our initial spectropolarimetric findings, and discuss the results from modeling these observations.
How to cite: Masiero, J., Muinonen, K., Tinyanont, S., and Millar-Blanchaer, M.: Polarimetric properties of asteroids in the near-infrared, European Planetary Science Congress 2021, online, 13–24 Sep 2021, EPSC2021-47, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2021-47, 2021.