Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2011
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011aas...21730103m&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #217, #301.03; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
WISE has surveyed the solar system to unprecedented sensitivity and resolution in its wavelength bands. Corresponding to the peak of thermal emission of many solar system bodies and particles, the 12 and 22 micron bands detected asteroids, comets, comet debris trails, and zodiacal dust to several AU from the sun. Some of the objects and material are too dark to have been detected by visible-light surveys, and previous infrared telescopes in space have either not covered the whole sky or have had far less sensitivity. As a consequence, WISE explores 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 are relatively insensitive to albedo. Yet combined with visual magnitudes, WISE data yield albedos. Orbital migration driven by asymmetrical thermal reradiation of absorbed sunlight depends on size and albedo, and affects the evolution of the orbits of asteroids. The distributions of sizes of asteroids, and the dependences of those distributions with orbital parameters to be uncovered by WISE are therefore evidence of the processes that brought the solar system to its current state. Dark asteroids that approach Earth are especially menacing if they have evaded detection by ground-based surveys, so WISE has refined knowledge of the impact hazard. WISE data help the study of the formation of cometary comae, tails, and dust trails, and the rate of mass loss from comets. Finally, the zodiacal dust bands, being the asteroidal component of the zodiacal dust, hold the key to determining the magnitude of the asteroid component.
McMillan Robert S.
WISE Team
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