CHARACTERIZING SUBPOPULATIONS WITHIN THE NEAR-EARTH OBJECTS WITH NEOWISE: PRELIMINARY RESULTS

Journal Article · Wed Jun 20 00:00:00 EDT 2012 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/752/2/110· OSTI ID:22037016

Mainzer, A; Masiero, J; Bauer, J; Giorgini, J ^[1]; Grav, T ^[2]; McMillan, R S ^[3]; Spahr, T ^[4]; Cutri, R M ^[5]; Tholen, D J; Jedicke, R ^[6]; Walker, R ^[7]; Wright, E ^[8]

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1. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109 (United States)
2. Planetary Science Institute, 1700 East Fort Lowell, Tucson, AZ 85719-2395 (United States)
3. Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, 1629 East University Boulevard, Tucson, AZ 85721-0092 (United States)
4. Minor Planet Center, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
5. Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125 (United States)
6. Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI (United States)
7. Monterey Institute for Research in Astronomy, 200 Eighth Street, Marina, CA 93933 (United States)
8. Department of Physics and Astronomy, UCLA, P.O. Box 91547, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1547 (United States)

We present the preliminary results of an analysis of the sub-populations within the near-Earth asteroids, including the Atens, Apollos, Amors, and those that are considered potentially hazardous using data from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). In order to extrapolate the sample of objects detected by WISE to the greater population, we determined the survey biases for asteroids detected by the project's automated moving object processing system (known as NEOWISE) as a function of diameter, visible albedo, and orbital elements. Using this technique, we are able to place constraints on the number of potentially hazardous asteroids larger than 100 m and find that there are {approx}4700 {+-} 1450 such objects. As expected, the Atens, Apollos, and Amors are revealed by WISE to have somewhat different albedo distributions, with the Atens being brighter than the Amors. The cumulative size distributions of the various near-Earth object (NEO) subgroups vary slightly between 100 m and 1 km. A comparison of the observed orbital elements of the various sub-populations of the NEOs with the current best model is shown.

• OSTI ID: 22037016
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 752, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
ALBEDO
ASTEROIDS
ASTRONOMY
ASTROPHYSICS
CATALOGS
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
INFRARED SURVEYS
PLANETS
SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION