ICARUS 63, 201--205 (1985)
Physical Parameters of Near-Earth Asteroid 1982 DV
FAITH VILAS, 1 DAVID J. THOLEN, 2 LARRY A. LEBOFSKY, 3 AND
HUMBERTO CAMPINS 3'4
Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721
GLENN J. VEEDER 3
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91109
RICHARD P. BINZEL
Department of Astronomy, University of Texas, Austin, Texas 78712
AND
ALAN T. TOKUNAGA
Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822
Received November 19, 1984; revised May 20, 1985
Visual and infrared observations were made of Amor asteroid 1982 DV during its discovery
apparition. Broadband visual and near-infrared photometry shows that it is an S-class asteroid.
Narrowband spectrophotometry shows an absorption feature due to olivine or pyroxene or both
centered at 0.93 gm. Applying a nonrotating thermal model to 10-/zm photometry, the geometric
albedo is calculated to be approximately 0.27. The geometric albedo for a slowly rotating, rocky
surface was calculated for 1 night to be 0.15, consistent with S-class asteroid albedos. Thus, 1982
DV is either one of the most reflective S-class asteroids known, or a significant amount of bare rock
is exposed on the asteroid's surface. For the nonrotating model, ellipsoidal dimensions for 1982 DV
are 3.5 × 1.4 × 1.4 km. © 1985AcademicPress. Inc.
INTRODUCTION
The known near-Earth asteroids repre-
sent a population of objects which probably
contains the sources of the meteorites
found on the Earth. Additionally, their
proximity to the Earth identifies them as
attractive targets for future space explora-
tion. Thus, determination of the physical
~ Present address: NASA Johnson Space Center/
SN3, Houston, Tex. 77058.
2 Present address: Institute for Astronomy, Univer-
sity of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822.
3 Visiting astronomer at the Infrared Telescope Fa-
cility, which is operated by the University of Hawaii
under contract from the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration.
4 Present address: Planetary Science Institute, 2030
E. Speedway, Suite 201, Tucson, Ariz. 85719.
201
properties of the near-Earth asteroids is of
significant interest. The Amor asteroid 1982
DV was discovered by Schuster (1982) in
February 1982. Helin et ai. (1984) report
that 1982 DV is the ninth most accessible
asteroid for rendevous by unmanned space
probes. An effort was made to collect a va-
riety of data on this asteroid during the fa-
vorable apparition of 1982 in order to char-
acterize its physical properties. We report
some of these observations here.
OBSERVATIONS
Visual and near-infrared observations of
1982 DV were obtained at the University of
Arizona Catalina Station 1.54-m telescope.
Broadband photometry was obtained on UT
May 15, 21, and 23, 1982, using a photome-
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