A revised asteroid polarization-albedo relationship using WISE/NEOWISE data

Details A revised asteroid polarization-albedo relationship using WISE/NEOWISE data A revised asteroid polarization-albedo relationship using WISE/NEOWISE data

2012-02-10

arxiv.org/abs/1202.2379v1

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics

16 pages, Accepted to ApJ

Scientific paper

We present a reanalysis of the relationship between asteroid albedo and polarization properties using the albedos derived from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. We find that the function that best describes this relation is a three-dimensional linear fit in the space of log(albedo)-log(polarization slope)-log(minimum polarization). When projected to two dimensions the parameters of the fit are consistent with those found in previous work. We also define p* as the quantity of maximal polarization variation when compared with albedo and present the best fitting albedo-p* relation. Some asteroid taxonomic types stand out in this three-dimensional space, notably the E, B, and M Tholen types, while others cluster in clumps coincident with the S- and C-complex bodies. We note that both low albedo and small (D<30 km) asteroids are under-represented in the polarimetric sample, and we encourage future polarimetric surveys to focus on these bodies.

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