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Photometry of the Didymos System across the DART impact apparition
Moskovitz, Nicholas
Thomas, Cristina
Pravec, Petr
Lister, Tim
Polakis, Tom
Osip, David
Kareta, Theodore
Rożek, Agata
Chesley, Steven
Naidu, Shantanu
Scheirich, Peter
Ryan, William
Ryan, Eileen
Skiff, Brian
Snodgrass, Colin
Knight, Matthew
Rivkin, Andrew
Chabot, Nancy
Ayvazian, Vova
Belskaya, Irina
Benkhaldoun, Zouhair
Berteşteanu, Daniel
Bonavita, Mariangela
Bressi, Terrence
Brucker, Melissa
Burgdorf, Martin
Burkhonov, Otabek
Burt, Brian
Contreras, Carlos
Chatelain, Joseph
Choi, Young-Jun
Daily, Matthew
de León, Julia
Ergashev, Kamoliddin
Farnham, Tony
Fatka, Petr
Ferrais, Marin
Geier, Stefan
Gomez, Edward
Greenstreet, Sarah
Gröller, Hannes
Hergenrother, Carl
Holt, Carrie
Hornoch, Kamil
Husárik, Marek
Inasaridze, Raguli
Jehin, Emmanuel
Khalouei, Elahe
Eluo, Jean-Baptiste
Kim, Myung-Jin
Krugly, Yurij
Kučáková, Hana
Kušnirák, Peter
Larsen, Jeffrey
Lee, Hee-Jae
Lejoly, Cassandra
Licandro, Javier
Longa-Peña, Penélope
Mastaler, Ronald
McCully, Curtis
Moon, Hong-Kyu
Morrell, Nidia
Nath, Arushi
Oszkiewicz, Dagmara
Parrott, Daniel
Phillips, Liz
Popescu, Marcel
Pray, Donald
Prodan, George Pantelimon
Read, Michael
Reva, Inna
Roark, Vernon
Santana-Ros, Toni
Scotti, James
Tatara, Taiyo
Thirouin, Audrey
Tholen, David
Troianskyi, Volodymyr
Tubbiolo, Andrew
Villa, Katelyn
IOP Publishing
2024
On 2022 September 26, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft impacted Dimorphos, the satellite of binary near-Earth asteroid (65803) Didymos. This demonstrated the efficacy of a kinetic impactor for planetary defense by changing the orbital period of Dimorphos by 33 minutes. Measuring the period change relied heavily on a coordinated campaign of lightcurve photometry designed to detect mutual events (occultations and eclipses) as a direct probe of the satellite’s orbital period. A total of 28 telescopes contributed 224 individual lightcurves during the impact apparition from 2022 July to 2023 February. We focus here on decomposable lightcurves, i.e., those from which mutual events could be extracted. We describe our process of lightcurve decomposition and use that to release the full data set for future analysis. We leverage these data to place constraints on the postimpact evolution of ejecta. The measured depths of mutual events relative to models showed that the ejecta became optically thin within the first ∼1 day after impact and then faded with a decay time of about 25 days. The bulk magnitude of the system showed that ejecta no longer contributed measurable brightness enhancement after about 20 days postimpact. This bulk photometric behavior was not well represented by an HG photometric model. An HG1G2 model did fit the data well across a wide range of phase angles. Lastly, we note the presence of an ejecta tail through at least 2023 March. Its persistence implied ongoing escape of ejecta from the system many months after DART impact.
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Photometry of the Didymos System across the DART impact apparition.pdf
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