The Mission Accessible Near-Earth Object Survey (MANOS): first photometric results.
Abstract
The Mission Accessible Near-Earth Object Survey (MANOS) is a physical characterization survey of Near Earth Objects (NEOs) that was originally awarded multi-year survey status by NOAO and recently has employed additional facilities available to Lowell Observatory and the University of Hawaii. Our main goal is to provide physical data, such as rotational properties and composition, for several hundred mission accessible NEOs across visible and near-infrared wavelengths.As of February 2015, 12,287 NEOs have been discovered. Despite this impressive number, physical information for the majority of these objects remains limited. Typical NEOs fade in a matter of days or weeks after their discovery, thus their characterization requires a challenging set of rapid response observations.Using a variety of 1-m to 4-m class telescopes, we aim to observe 5 to 10 newly discovered sub-km NEOs per month in order to derive their rotational properties. Such rotational data can provide useful information about physical properties, like shape, surface heterogeneity/homogeneity, density, internal structure, and internal cohesion. Here, we present early results of the MANOS photometric survey for more than 50 NEOs. One of the goals of this survey is to increase the number of sub-km NEOs whose short-term variability has been studied and to compile a high quality homogeneous database which may be used to perform statistical analyses.We report light curves from our first two years of observing and show objects with rotational periods from a couple of hours down to few seconds. We consider the spin rate distributions of several sub-samples according to their size and other physical parameters. Our results were merged with rotational parameters of other asteroids in the literature to build a larger sample. This allows us to identify correlations of rotational properties with orbital parameters. In particular, we want to study MOID vs. rotation period/morphology/elongation/amplitude, rotation properties vs spectral type/composition, etc. We are also planning to observe some objects at different epochs to potentially constrain shape and/or phase curves.
- Publication:
-
IAU General Assembly
- Pub Date:
- August 2015
- Bibcode:
- 2015IAUGA..2245003T