Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Sep 2009
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dps....41.4505m&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #41, #45.05
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
WISE's all-sky survey of the solar system will be unprecedented in sensitivity and resolution in its wavelength bands. Corresponding to the peak of thermal emission of many solar system bodies and particles, the 12 and 23 micron bands will detect asteroids, comets, comet debris trails, and zodiacal dust to several AU from the sun. Some of the objects and material will be too dark and faint to have been detected previously by visible-light surveys, and previous infrared telescopes in space have either not covered the whole sky or have had far less sensitivity. Consequently, WISE will explore the spatial distributions and thermal properties of the objects and material populating the inner solar system efficiently and without bias favoring bright albedos.
At the temperatures dominant in the inner solar system, IR flux is more directly related to the size of the emitter than is visible flux, so the detections of asteroids by WISE will be closer to a diameter-limited census. Yet combined with visible-light data, the albedos of those asteroids detected by WISE can also be derived anew.
Orbital migration driven by thermal reradiation of absorbed sunlight is
size-dependent and albedo-dependent, and affects the evolution of the orbits of asteroids within a certain size range. The distributions of sizes of asteroids, and the dependences of those distributions with orbital parameters to be uncovered by WISE will therefore be evidence of the processes that brought the solar system to its current arrangement.
Asteroids in orbits that bring them close to Earth are especially menacing if they are dark and have evaded detection by ground-based surveys in visible light. But dark objects are especially detectable in the IR, so WISE will make a unique and large contribution to the assessment of the hazard of impacts on Earth.
Bauer James
Cutri Roc
Grav Tommy
Jedicke Robert
Mainzer Amanda K.
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