VizieR Online Data Catalog: NEOWISE reactivation mission: 2nd yr data (Nugent+, 2016)

We present diameters and albedos of asteroids from the second year of the Near-Earth Object Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) mission following the reactivation of the spacecraft from hibernation in late 2013. Diameters and albedos of asteroids from the first year of the NEOWISE mission following reactivation are given in Nugent et al. 2015 (Cat. J/ApJ/814/117). NEOWISE is a space-based infrared telescope that obtains an image of the sky every 11 seconds simultaneously in two bands, W1 (3.4μm) and W2 (4.6μm). After successfully completing its prime mission in 2011, the WISE spacecraft was placed into hibernation for 32 months before being reactivated and renamed NEOWISE in late 2013. The goals of the NEOWISE mission are to discover, track, and characterize minor planets. Images and extracted source lists from all phases of the WISE and NEOWISE missions have been delivered to the public via the Infrared Science Archive (Cutri et al. 2012, http://wise2.ipac.caltech.edu/docs/release/allsky/expsup/sec8_1.html; Cutri et al. 2015, http://wise2.ipac.caltech.edu/docs/release/neowise/expsup/), NASA's designated archive for infrared astronomical data.

This second year of data provides multi-epoch observational data of uniform quality that can be used to better constrain the sizes, shapes, rotation state, and thermophysical properties of the 9092 asteroids in the reactivation Year 2 sample. We present preliminary diameters and albedos calculated from NEOWISE Year 2 Reactivation mission observations, which spanned 2014 December 13 to 2015 December 13. Diameters and albedos calculated from NEOWISE Year 2 Reactivation mission observations will be submitted to the Planetary Data System.

NEOWISE discovered 198 Near-Earth Asteroid (NEAs) and comets during Years 1 and 2 of the Reactivation mission. In addition to observing 175 NEAs that had not had diameters measured previously from NEOWISE data, the Year 2 Reactivation mission obtained thermal infrared observations at additional epochs for 32 NEAs. NEOWISE typically observes asteroids ~10-12 times over ~1-1.5days, and requires a minimum of 5 detections of a discovery candidate for submission to the Minor Planet Center (MPC).

(3 data files).