Charles Galdies and Stephen M Brincat are pleased to notify the Astronomical Society of Malta of their research published in the peer reviewed scientific journal – the Minor Planet Bulletin (Volume 49 Issue 1) where the rotation period of three asteroids have been derived through photometric means. The asteroids that were monitored were observed from two observatories at Naxxar and San Gwann.
This paper is the result of an observational collaborative campaign where at the time of observation, the rotation period of three asteroids was unknown to the astronomical community. Specifically, we estimated that the days over 2229 Mezzarco lasts for 10.241 hours; for 3648 Raffinetti, 5.177 hours; and for 3919 Maryanning, 7.094 hours.
This work is important in that it characterises the main properties of the asteroid population. Recently, this information is becoming increasingly important for space missions that are aimed to study the properties of individual asteroids.
To derive these results, we carried out the research over 23 different nights of observation followed by many hours of processing and analysis. A link to our paper can be found below.
This research paper is available through the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System at:
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2022MPBu…49….1G/abstract
Charles Galdies; Stephen M. Brincat