Disk-resolved photometry of Asteroid (2867) Steins

International audienceWe present a new method to perform disk-resolved photometry in order to investigate the intrinsic photometric properties of the surface of small Solar System bodies. We adopt the standard approach where a shape model is combined with a photometric formalism - in practise the Hapke formalism - to remove the effects of topography and recover the photometric (Hapke) parameters of either the global surface or, in its most elaborated form, the spatial variations of these parameters across.:he surface. Our method operates in the space of the facets representing the three-dimensional shape of the body, whereas all past analysis have always been performed in the space of the image pixels although they are not intrinsic to the surface of the body. This has the advantage of automatically tracking the same local surface element on a series of images. We first apply our method to images of the nucleus of Cornet 9P/Tempel 1 obtained by the High-Resolution Imager (HRI) instrument on board the Deep Impact spacecraft and our derived Hapke parameters are in good agreement with those published by Li et al. (Li, J.-Y. et al. [2007]. Icarus 187, 41-55) within their respective uncertainties. We confirm the presence c f an extended region of higher roughness in the southern hemisphere of the nucleus and the higher albedo of the ice-rich regions identified by Sunshine et al. (Sunshine, J.M. et al. [2006]. Science 311, 1453-1455) near the equator. The photometric properties of Asteroid (2867) Steins are then studied from multi-spectral images obtained with the OSIRIS Wide Angle Camera (WAC) on board the Rosetta spacecraft during its flyby on 5 September 2008. Our analysis indicates that the surface is highly porous (similar to 84%) and that it exhibits both a shadow-hiding opposition effect (SHOE) and probably, a coherent-backscatter opposition effect (CBOE). The single scattering albedo is the highest (SSA = 0.57) ever observed among small bodies visited by spacecrafts. Our modelled roughness parameter is indicative of a high microscale roughness. The surface of Steins may in fact exhibit a fractal surface with high roughness present on a large range of scales, from micrometers to centimeters. The geometric and Bond albedos are calculated with the Hapke parameters yielding A(P) = 0.39 +/- 0.02 and A(B) = 0.24 +/- 0.01. This high albedo is consistent with an iron-poor surface composition similar to aubrite meteorites which are suspected to originate from the E-type asteroids. We find no photometric variations on the surface at the (limited) spatial resolution of the WAC images. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved