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arXiv · 2002.07941

Asteroid Diameters and Albedos from NEOWISE Reactivation Mission Years Four and Five

Joseph R. Masiero·A. K. Mainzer·J. M. Bauer·R. M. Cutri·T. Grav·E. Kramer·J. Pittichová·S. Sonnett·E. L. Wright
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Abstract

The Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) spacecraft has been conducting a two-band thermal infrared survey to detect and characterize asteroids and comets since its reactivation in Dec 2013. Using the observations collected during the fourth and fifth years of the survey, our automated pipeline detected candidate moving objects which were verified and reported to the Minor Planet Center. Using these detections, we perform thermal modeling of each object from the near-Earth object and Main Belt asteroid populations to constrain their sizes. We present thermal model fits of asteroid diameters for 189 NEOs and 5831 MBAs detected during the fourth year of the survey, and 185 NEOs and 5776 MBAs from the fifth year. To date, the NEOWISE Reactivation survey has provided thermal model characterization for 957 unique NEOs. Including all phases of the original WISE survey brings the total to 1473 unique NEOs that have been characterized between 2010 and the present.

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Joseph R. Masiero, A. K. Mainzer, J. M. Bauer, R. M. Cutri, T. Grav, E. Kramer, J. Pittichová, S. Sonnett, E. L. Wright. 2020-02-19. Asteroid Diameters and Albedos from NEOWISE Reactivation Mission Years Four and Five. https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.07941

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