Resent radar observations of asteroid 1566 Icarus

Mahapatra, Pravas R and Ostro, Steven J and Benner, Lance AM and Rosema, Keith D and Jurgens, Raymond F and Winkler, Ron and Rose, Randy and Giorgini, Jon D and Yeomans, Donald K and Slade, Martin A (1999) Resent radar observations of asteroid 1566 Icarus. In: Planetary and Space Science, 47 (8-9). pp. 987-995.

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Abstract

We report Doppler-only radar observations of Icarus at Goldstone at a transmitter frequency of 8510 MHz (3.5 cm wavelength) during 8-10 June 1996, the first radar detection of the object since 1968. Optimally filtered and folded spectra achieve a maximum opposite-circular (OC) polarization signal-to-noise ratio of about 10 and help to constrain Icarus' physical properties. We obtain an OC radar cross section of 0.05 km(2) (with a 35% uncertainty), which is less than values estimated by Goldstein (1969) and by Pettengill et al. (1969), and a circular polarization (SC/OC) ratio of 0.5+/-0.2. We analyze the echo power spectrum with a model incorporating the echo bandwidth B and a spectral shape parameter it, yielding a coupled constraint between B and n. We adopt 25 Hz as the lower bound on B, which gives a lower bound on the maximum pole-on breadth of about 0.6 km and upper bounds on the radar and optical albedos that are consistent with Icarus' tentative QS classification. The observed circular polarization ratio indicates a very rough near-surface at spatial scales of the order of the radar wavelength. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Planetary and Space Science
Publisher:	Elsevier Science
Additional Information:	Copyright of this article belongs to Elsevier Science.
Department/Centre:	Division of Mechanical Sciences > Aerospace Engineering(Formerly Aeronautical Engineering)
Date Deposited:	29 Jun 2011 05:24
Last Modified:	27 Feb 2019 05:13
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/38748

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