NIR albedos of main-belt asteroids

DOI

We present revised near-infrared albedo fits of 2835 main-belt asteroids observed by WISE/NEOWISE over the course of its fully cryogenic survey in 2010. These fits are derived from reflected-light near-infrared images taken simultaneously with thermal emission measurements, allowing for more accurate measurements of the near-infrared albedos than is possible for visible albedo measurements. Because our sample requires reflected light measurements, it undersamples small, low-albedo asteroids, as well as those with blue spectral slopes across the wavelengths investigated. We find that the main belt separates into three distinct groups of 6%, 16%, and 40% reflectance at 3.4 {mu}m. Conversely, the 4.6 {mu}m albedo distribution spans the full range of possible values with no clear grouping. Asteroid families show a narrow distribution of 3.4 {mu}m albedos within each family that map to one of the three observed groupings, with the (221) Eos family being the sole family associated with the 16% reflectance 3.4 {mu}m albedo group. We show that near-infrared albedos derived from simultaneous thermal emission and reflected light measurements are important indicators of asteroid taxonomy and can identify interesting targets for spectroscopic follow-up.

Identifier
DOI http://doi.org/10.26093/cds/vizier.17910121
Source https://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/lp/custom/CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/791/121
Related Identifier https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/791/121
Related Identifier http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/791/121
Metadata Access http://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/pmh/pubreg.xml?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_b2find&identifier=ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/791/121
Provenance
Creator Masiero J.R.; Grav T.; Mainzer A.K.; Nugent C.R.; Bauer J.M.; Stevenson R.,Sonnett S.
Publisher CDS
Publication Year 2017
Rights https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.html
OpenAccess true
Contact CDS support team <cds-question(at)unistra.fr>
Representation
Resource Type Dataset; AstroObjects
Discipline Astrophysics and Astronomy; Natural Sciences; Physics; Solar System Astronomy