A New Calibration of the Polarimetric Albedo Scale of Asteroids

Abstract

The constants of the empirical dependences, used for defining asteroid albedos from polarimetric observations, were determined almost 20 years ago. Since then, asteroid albedos have been derived from ground-based radiometric observations, IRAS data, and observations of stellar occultations by asteroids. Using all these data and also newly available polarimetric observations of asteroids, we have obtained new values of the constants of the dependences, which we recommend to be used to define asteroid albedos by the polarimetric method. They arelogpν=−0.98 logh− 1.73logpν=−1.22 logPmin − 0.92.The measured values of the negative polarizationPmin, the polarimetric slopeh, and new values of polarimetric albedop_gn of 127 asteroids are presented in an accompanying table.