Broad-Band Photometry of the Potenially Hazardous Asteroid 2002 LV.

ATel #2134; M. Hicks (JPL/Caltech), H. Rhoades (JPL/Caltech), J. Somers (Moorpark College), M. Grote (Moorpark College)
on 21 Jul 2009; 19:32 UT
Credential Certification: Michael D. Hicks (Michael.Hicks@jpl.nasa.gov)

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The Near-Earth Asteroid 2002 LV was discovered by the LINEAR survey on June 01 2002. With a likely effective diameter of between 1.2 < D < 1.7 km, and a Minimum Orbit Intersection Distance MOID = 0.027 AU, the object has been designated as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid by the Minor Planet Center. We took advantage of its well-placed 2009 apparition to obtain Bessel BVRI colors and rotational light-curve information over the course of three nights at the JPL Table Mountain 0.6-m telescope (TMO), as illustrated in Figures 1-3 [1][2][3] and summarized in Table 1.

Our data constrains 2002 LV's composition and rotational state. We found that the averaged colors (B-R=1.261+/-0.023; V-R=0.447+/-0.017; I-R=0.392+/-0.027) were best matched by both L-type and T-type taxonomies. This association was obtained through a comparison of our colors with the 1341 asteroid spectra in the SMASS II database as archived on the PDS node (Bus & Binzel 2002) [Figure 4 and Table 2]. L and T-type asteroids are rare spectral types and may represent highly weathered/reddened S-type asteroids. Low-resolution optical/near-IR spectroscopy and albedo measurements would be helpful to resolve the ambiguity in taxonomic classification. Figure 5 illustrates the phased light-curve of 2002 LV. Standard Fourier analysis gave a synodic period P_syn = 6.200+/-0.003 hr.

Copyright 2009. All rights reserved. The research described in this telegram was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Table 1: TMO R-band photometry observational summary.

Table 2: Top 5 spectral matches in the SMASS II database.