Abstract
An asteroid's lightcurve (time variation of its total brightness) depends on its physical characteristics, such as its position, shape, rotational vector, and the property of light reflection on its surface. The aim of this study is to understand how much we can derive information on these physical parameters from only its lightcurve. We examined the correlation between a lightcurve and each of the physical parameters of the asteroid, with a numerical model. Our numerical lightcurve model is modified from that of Hasegawa et al. (2000), which takes into account an asteroid's orbital elements, shape, rotational vector, and the parameters of light reflection on its surface. Hapke's macroscopic roughness model (1984) is applied to our model as the property of light reflection.
