Asteroid Spectroscopy

The remote sensing aspect of my research seeks to better understand asteroid surfaces using Visible-Near Infrared (VIS/NIR) spectroscopy. I began this work as part of my dissertation research, in which I used laboratory-measured mineralogies of meteorites to derive a series of VIS/NIR spectral calibrations to determine asteroid mineralogies (Dunn et al. 2010). Since the publication of this study, these calibrations have been used extensively (cited in 32 publications, not counting my own). In 2013, I applied these calibrations to the Near Earth Asteroid population and used a computer model to derive possible source regions for these objects (Dunn et al. 2013). This work resulted in my first publication with a student co-author. I have been a co-author on three papers implementing these calibrations (Bhatt et al. 2015; Le Corre et al. 2015; Lindsay et al. 2016). I also co-authored two peer-reviewed book chapters in Asteroids IV (Reddy et al. 2015 and Binzel et al. 2015), a newly published volume in the University of Arizona’s Space Science Series.