Mapping the distribution of asteroid spin and shape properties by inversion of their photometry from surveys

Asteroid photometry collected from large sky surveys provides valuable information about the spin and shape of these celestial bodies. This information can be uniquely extracted using light-curve inversion methods, provided there are enough accurate photometric measurements for each asteroid. In our study, we utilized photometric data from several surveys, including Catalina, Mt. Lemmon, Pan-STARRS 1 and 2, ZTF, Gaia DR3, ATLAS, and ASAS-SN. By applying light-curve inversion, we derived sidereal rotation periods, spin-axis directions, phase curves, colors, and convex shape models for approximately 40,000 asteroids. The majority of this sample consists of main-belt asteroids, revealing a complex relationship between the distribution of their spins and shapes and various physical and dynamical properties.