Reflectance Spectrum of Main Belt Asteroid P/2010 A2

  • Published : 2011.04.05

Abstract

P/2010 A2, a main-belt asteroid having comet-like dust trail was discovered in January 2010, but the origin of the trail is controversial. Moreno et al. (2010) reported water-ice sublimation as a mechanism for the comet-like activity, whereas other researches (Jewitt et al. 2010; Snodgrass et al. 2010) stated that impact collision contributed to the dust trail. For asteroids are categorized based on spectral shape, optical observation using different color filters makes it possible to determine the taxonomic type of P/2010 A2 nucleus, thus gives an answer to the question of activation mechanism of the object. In this presentation, we report multiband observation of P/2010 A2 in January and March 2010 with 1-meter telescope of Ishigaki-Jima Astronomical Observatory. We employed three broadband filters of g', Rc, and Ic. In this presentation, we focus on the data acquisition, the reduction and the derivation of the reflectance spectrum of debris in the trail. Finally we discuss the potential cause of dust ejection from this asteroid.

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