  Tens of thousands of sparse-in-time lightcurves from astrometric projects are
publicly available. We investigate these data and use them in the lightcurve
inversion method to derive new asteroid models. By having a greater number of
models with known physical properties, we can gain a better insight into the
nature of individual objects and into the whole asteroid population. We use
sparse photometry from selected observatories from the AstDyS database, either
alone or in combination with dense lightcurves, to determine new asteroid
models by the lightcurve inversion method. We present 80 new asteroid models
derived from combined data sets where sparse photometry is taken from the
AstDyS database and dense lightcurves are from the Uppsala Asteroid Photometric
Catalogue (UAPC) and from several individual observers. For 18 asteroids, we
present updated shape solutions based on new photometric data. The addition of
new models increases the total number of models derived by the lightcurve
inversion method to ~200. We also present a simple statistical analysis of
physical properties of asteroids where we look for possible correlations
between various physical parameters with an emphasis on the spin vector. We
present the observed and de-biased distributions of ecliptic latitudes with
respect to different size ranges of asteroids as well as a simple theoretical
model of the latitude distribution and then compare its predictions with the
observed distributions. From this analysis we find that the latitude
distribution of small asteroids (D < 30 km) is clustered towards ecliptic poles
and can be explained by the YORP thermal effect while the latitude distribution
of larger asteroids (D > 60 km) exhibits an evident excess of prograde
rotators, probably of primordial origin.
