East Asian Young Astronomers Meeting 2015
Time: February 9-12, 2015
Place: Taipei, Taiwan

Oral Presentation

Rotationally Resolved Polarization Observations of the Main-Belt Asteroid (596) Scheila

Kang-Shian Pan(NCU), Henry Hsieh(ASIAA)

We can observe an asteroid due to its sunlight reflection. The reflecting light from an asteroid might be polarized by its surface materials. Therefore, polarization observation could characterize asteroid surface materials. Although several asteroids have been observed by using polarization, none of them have rotationally resolved polarization observations to see variance on their surface. The main belt asteroid, Scheila, has been impacted lately. D. Bodewits et al (2014) reported the difference on Schelia's lightcurves has been observed before and after the impact. In this work, we report the result of the rotationally resolved polarization observations of Scheila in November 2014. In order to compare Scheila's surface polarization to the relative old asteroids, we also observed Themis and several its family members including their rotational effects.