Polarimetric properties of asteroids

Abstract

Quite frequently astronomic polarimetric observations of different celestial bodies do not guarantee a proper phase angle coverage that is required for estimating all of the attributes of their polarization phase curves with a high accuracy. To approximate the phase dependences of polarization observed for particulate surfaces, we use a simple empiric formula recently suggested by Shestopalov (2004). The efficiency of the approximating function in a wide range of phase angles is illustrated with the use of the results of polarimetric measurements of lunar areas, lunar samples, and near-Earth asteroids. For asteroids of various types, we can reproduce their negative polarization branches with adequate accuracy and roughly estimate a probable value of the maximum polarization degree at an appropriate phase angle. From the polarimetric database available at NASA PDS [Asteroid Polarimetric Database V7.0 (2012)] we calculated the main parameters of 153 polarimetric curves of asteroids in various spectral bands with the accuracy comparable to the observation errors. One more purpose of our analysis was to find correlations between the polarimetric and photometric properties of asteroids. For C-, M-, S-, E-type asteroids, the characteristics of the negative branch of polarization curves turned out to correlate closely with the phase coefficient of the photometric function of asteroids and the photometric roughness of asteroid surfaces. This implies that the complex geometry of the surface microrelief affects the polarization properties of asteroids. In particular, the data scattering around regression lines on the plots of the albedo versus the depth of negative polarization branch and the slope of the polarimetric function at inversion angle strongly depends on the differences in the photometric roughness of asteroid surfaces.