A new three-parameter H, G1, G2 magnitude phase function for asteroids
Résumé
We have developed a new three-parameter H, G1, G2 magnitude phase function for asteroids. The phase function is aimed at replacing the currently adopted two-parameter H, G phase function. We show that H, G1, G2 produces better fits of available magnitude - phase curves of well-observed asteroids. We show also that the new system can be conveniently reduced to a two-parameter H, G12 magnitude phase function, which allows us to derive better estimates of the absolute magnitudes of asteroids for which poorly-sampled magnitude phase curves are available.