Measuring the Minor Planets: Additional Diameters and Albedos for Asteroids Derived from WISE/NEOWISE Infrared Survey Data
Abstract
The vast majority of the 800,000 minor planets identified to date in our solar system have little information about them known except for their orbital parameters and visible brightness. Measurements of physical properties such as size distributions and albedos can provide insight into the origins of small bodies, including membership in collisional families; origins within inner or outer solar system populations; and composition. With NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission, now known in its reactivated mission phase as NEOWISE, a large archive of infrared survey data is now publicly available for small bodies, allowing diameters and albedos to be derived for two orders of magnitude more small bodies than were previously available. Previously published diameters and albedos of minor planets from WISE/NEOWISE used detections bright enough to appear in individual exposures. However, since the spacecraft collects an average of 10-12 exposures per visit on most minor planets, it is possible to shift-and-stack these exposures along an asteroid's orbital path to recover detections of objects that are too faint to appear in some or all individual exposures. We have completed stacking of all 800,000 known minor planets that have passed through the WISE/NEOWISE fields of view, resulting in the recovery of additional detections of objects with previously unpublished diameters and albedos. These data will be publicly released, increasing the number of asteroids with well-determined basic physical characterizations.
- Publication:
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AAS/Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting Abstracts #50
- Pub Date:
- October 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018DPS....5030411M