Statistical analysis of asteroidal and cometary polarization phase curves

¹ Observatory, University of Helsinki, PO Box 14, 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland e-mail: Antti.I.Penttila@helsinki.fi
² Université Paris VI/Aéronomie CNRS-IPSL, BP 3, 92371 Verrières, France

Received: 7 October 2004
Accepted: 15 November 2004

Abstract

We use an empirical polarization phase curve model at various wavelengths to predict some statistical properties of comets and asteroids. First, we show how our model with Bayesian MCMC numerical methods predicts polarization behaviour at larger phase angles when only the smaller angle data are used. Our empirical model incorporates both the phase and colour dependency on the same footing. Second, a comparison between the existing taxonomy of asteroids and the clustering of asteroid classes based on polarization suggests a new method for the classification. We also heavily concentrate on the derivations of quantitative errors in our analysis.