The asteroid (3200) Phaeton will visit our planet in December 2017, which is why scientists are dedicating their efforts to unravel new details about this object, as it will approach Earth at about 10 million kilometers (0.069 Astronomical Units).
The modeling created by a team of international astronomers defines its orbit, spin period, and thermophysical parameters. Thus, Phaethon , an Apollo asteroid that could belong to the Pallas family of asteroids, approaches the Sun like no other asteroid, only 21 million kilometers away.
At that time, in December 2017, l you will observe the asteroid experts magnum with all kinds of technologies in order to discover more details about this space rock.
Light curve
Josef Hanus, from the National Center for Space Studies (France) and his team describe Phaethon’s light curve of around 0.1 magnitude, due to its small elongation after contrasting photometric data from 1994 to 2015. Examining a total of 55 high-density light curves added 29 new light curves of their own, identified by 9 different telescopes spread across the globe.
The study of the light curves has determined that the rotation period of this asteroid is approximately 3.6 hours and its size is 5.1 kilometers in diameter.
The study has been published in Arxiv.
