Bibcode
Huang, Haitao; Yang, Hongjing; Lee, Chung-Uk; Li, Bin; Qian, Qiyue; Tian, Jun; Gan, Tianjun; Mao, Shude; Zang, Weicheng; Kim, Dong-Jin
Bibliographical reference
Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
Advertised on:
7
2026
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
Since 2015, the Korea Microlensing Telescope Network (KMTNet) has conducted high-cadence, near-continuous observations of the Galactic bulge for nearly nine months each year from three sites in Chile, South Africa, and Australia, and its wide field of view provides a unique opportunity to extract asteroid lightcurves from archival survey data. In this work, we performed photometric measurements of bright asteroids (V < 20 mag) identified within a one-square-degree field during the 2018 KMTNet bulge season. We derived reliable rotation periods for 96 asteroids, including 84 objects without previously published lightcurves. The reliable spin-rates of the asteroids in our sample are broadly consistent with those reported in the Asteroid Lightcurve Database. This archival mining approach can be readily extended to a much larger KMTNet footprint, and the existing ∼12 deg2 high-cadence KMTNet dataset has the potential to yield reliable rotation periods (U ≥ 2+) for more than 5500 asteroids, substantially expanding the current database of asteroid rotational properties.