Lightcurve and rotation period determination for asteroid 3634 Iwan

TL;DR

This study reports the first lightcurve and rotation period estimate for asteroid 3634 Iwan based on a single night of observational data, suggesting a synodic period of approximately 4.72 hours.

Contribution

First lightcurve and rotation period determination for asteroid 3634 Iwan using data from a single observational night.

Findings

Estimated synodic rotation period of 4.72 hours

Lightcurve amplitude of 0.15 mag

Need for longer observations to confirm period accuracy

Abstract

Lightcurve of the asteroid 3634 Iwan observed at the Bulgarian National Astronomical Observatory Rozhen in 2017 is presented. The asteroid was observed only one night, on 22 March 2017 accidentally in the field of view in which our target for shape modeling asteroid 289 Nenetta was positioned. The Asteroid Lightcurve Database (LCDB; Warner et al. 2009) did not contain any previously reported results for 3634 Iwan. If we accept that the ligtcurve of the asteroid is typical with two maxima and minima, a single night observations covers the whole rotational cycle. The lightcurve plotted by MPO Canopus provides a best fit to synodic period of $4.72\pm 0.06$ h with amplitude of $0.15\pm 0.02$ mag. Our assessment is that for the uniqueness of the period solution we need longer observational span which will reveal the number of extrema of the lightcurve and confirm the quality code U=3.