Projeto Observacional para 2015B - SO2015B-012

Autor: Daniela Lazzaro
Instituição: ON
e-mail: lazzaro@on.br

Co-autores:
Alvaro Alvarez Candal
Jose Sergio Silva
Filipe Viera de Melo Monteiro

Título: Assessing the surface homogeneity of (1459) Magnya, the outer Main Belt basaltic asteroid

Resumo: (1459) Magnya is the first basaltic asteroid discovered in the outer main belt (Lazzaro et al. 2000) and subsequent spectral observations indicate that its surface mineralogy is distinct from that of (4) Vesta (Hardensen et al. 2004). The need to increase the knowledge of its physical properties led us to derive the direction of the pole and the shape of this asteroid (Silva & Lazzaro 2015). Considering that these properties allow to identify which regions of the body are sampled at any epoch, we found that the viewing geometry at the time of Hardensen et al. observations was such that the visible surface was nearly unchanged during the observations, due to a nearly pole-on configuration. In September/October 2015 the asteroid will be at opposition and in a viewing geometry allowing to sample the equatorial region. Therefore, we propose to perform spectroscopic observations during a complete rotation of this very peculiar asteroid, aiming to assess its surface homogeneity and, thus, be able to set constraints on its origin and evolution.