THE DIVERSITY OF THE OPPOSITION EFFECT OF DARK ASTEROIDS

Introduction: The brightness behavior in the range of the opposition effect (OE) is found to be different for low, moderate and high albedo asteroids [1]. Maximal amplitude of the OE occurs for moderate albedo S and M-type asteroids. It can be explained by the combined influence of main physical mechanisms such as shadow hiding and coherent backscattering. Low albedo asteroids display the smallest amplitudes of opposition effect and the largest dispersion of them as compared to moderate and high albedo asteroids (Fig. 1).