An Improved Representation of the Average Opposition Magnitudes of Asteroids

Abstract

It is well-known that the asteroid mean opposition magnitude ℄ B(a,0) ℄ represent a crude approximation of asteroid average opposition brightness, especially for objects of high eccentricity and/or inclination. In the paper we propose a new simple method of calculating the “quasi-median opposition magnitude”, which very closely matches the median apparent brightness of an asteroid in opposition.