Determining Rotational Periods of Asteroids through Differential Photometry

Using the Texas A&M University-Commerce CDK700 telescope, data was collected on several asteroids. Calibration frames were taken each night in order to calibrate out the asteroid image. MPO Canopus was utilized to perform differential aperture photometry to create lightcurves and determine accurate rotational periods. The rotational periods found for each asteroid were: 5.788 ± 0.006 hours for 3519 Ambiorix, 2.788 ± 0.001 hours for 4569 Baerbel, and 5.632 ± 0.004 hours for 7468 Anfimov. Finally, the lightcurves were inverted to determine a possible model of each asteroid.