Photometric observations of Rosetta target asteroid 2867 Steins

Abstract

Asteroid 2867 Steins is one of two flyby targets of ESAs international Rosetta mission, launched in March, 2004. We obtained photometric observations of Steins on April 14-16, 2004 at Table Mountain Observatory, California, in order to characterize the asteroid physically, information that is crucial for planning the Steins flyby. This study includes the first detailed analysis of the physical properties of Steins from time-series R-filter data along with V- and I-filter photometric measurements.