arXiv subjects

Wing-Huen Ip

Publications and source records attributed to Wing-Huen Ip.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2020

GAUSS -- A Sample Return Mission to Ceres

The goal of Project GAUSS is to return samples from the dwarf planet Ceres. Ceres is the most accessible ocean world candidate and the largest reservoir of water in the inner solar system. It shows active cryovolcanism and hydrothermal activities in recent history that resulted in minerals not found in any other planets to date except for Earth's upper crust. The possible occurrence of recent subsurface ocean on Ceres and the complex geochemistry suggest possible past habitability and even the potential for ongoing habitability. Aiming to answer a broad spectrum of questions about the origin and evolution of Ceres and its potential habitability, GAUSS will return samples from this possible ocean world for the first time. The project will address the following top-level scientific questions: 1) What is the origin of Ceres and the origin and transfer of water and other volatiles in the inner solar system? 2) What are the physical properties and internal structure of Ceres? What do they tell us about the evolutionary and aqueous alteration history of icy dwarf planets? 3) What are the astrobiological implications of Ceres? Was it habitable in the past and is it still today? 4) What are the mineralogical connections between Ceres and our current collections of primitive meteorites? GAUSS will first perform a high-resolution global remote sensing investigation, characterizing the geophysical and geochemical properties of Ceres. Candidate sampling sites will then be identified, and observation campaigns will be run for an in-depth assessment of the candidate sites. Once the sampling site is selected, a lander will be deployed on the surface to collect samples and return them to Earth in cryogenic conditions that preserves the volatile and organic composition as well as the original physical status as much as possible.

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arXiv2020

Transit of asteroids across the 7/3 Kirkwood gap under the Yarkovsky effect

Many asteroids in the main belt are continuously pushed by Yarkovsky effect into regions of different mean motion resonances (MMRs) and then ejected out. They are considered as the principal source of near-Earth objects. We investigate in this paper the effects of the 7/3 MMR with Jupiter (J7/3 MMR) on the transportation of asteroids from Koronis and Eos families that reside respectively on the inner and outer side of the resonance. The fraction of asteroids that make successful crossing through the resonance and the escaping rate from the resonance are found to depend on the Yarkovsky drifting rate, the initial inclination and the migrating direction. The excitation of eccentricity and inclination due to the combined influence from both the resonance and Yarkovsky effect is discussed. Only the eccentricity can be pumped up considerably, and it is attributed mainly to the resonance. In the observational data, family members are also found in the resonance and on the opposite side of the resonance with respect to the corresponding family centre. The existence of these family members is explained using our results of numerical simulations. Finally, the replenishment of asteroids in the J7/3 MMR and the transportation of asteroids by it are discussed.

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arXiv2020

Asteroid migration due to the Yarkovsky effect and the distribution of the Eos family

Based on a linearized model of the Yarkovsky effect, we investigate in this paper the dependence of the semimajor axis drift $Δa$ of a celestial body on its size, spinning obliquity, initial orbit and thermal parameters on its surface. With appropriate simplification and approximation, we obtain the analytical solutions to the perturbation equations for the motion of asteroids influenced by the Yarkovsky effect, and they are then verified by numerical simulations of the full equations of motion. These solutions present explicitly the dependencies of $Δa$ on the thermal and dynamical parameters of the asteroid. With these analytical formulae for $Δa$, we investigate the combined seasonal and diurnal Yarkovsky effects. The critical points where the migration direction reverses are calculated and the consequent selective effects according to the size and rotation state of asteroids are discussed. %Solely the Yarkovsky effect is found to be able to produce some ring structure in the aged circumstellar debris disk. Finally, we apply the analytical formulae to calculate the migration of Eos family members. The space distribution of asteroids is well reproduced. Our calculations suggest that statistically the orientations of spin axes of family members satisfy a random-obliquity distribution, and the rotation rate $ω_{\rm rot}$ of asteroid depends on its size $R$ by $ω_{\rm rot}\propto R^{-1}$.

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arXiv2019

Low activity main belt comet 133P/Elst-Pizarro: New constraints on its Albedo, Temperature and Active Mechanism from a thermophysical perspective

133P/Elst-Pizarro is the firstly recognized main-belt comet, but we still know little about its nucleus. Firstly we use mid-infrared data of Spitzer-MIPS, Spitzer-IRS and WISE to estimate its effective diameter $D_{\rm eff}=3.9^{+0.4}_{-0.3}$ km, geometric albedo $p_{\rm v}=0.074\pm0.013$ and mean Bond albedo $A_{\rm eff,B}=0.024\pm0.004$. The albedo is used to compute 133P's temperature distribution, which shows significant seasonal variation, especially polar regions, ranging from $\sim40$ to $\sim200$ K. Based on current activity observations, the maximum water gas production rate is estimated to be $\sim1.4\times10^{23}\rm~s^{-1}$, being far weaker than $\sim10^{26}\rm~s^{-1}$ of JFC 67P at similar helio-centric distance $\sim2.7$ AU, indicating a thick dust mantle on the surface to lower down the gas production rate. The diameter of the sublimation area may be $<\sim200$ m according to our model prediction. We thus propose that 133P's activity is more likely to be caused by sublimation of regional near-surface ice patch rather than homogeneous buried ice layer. Such small near-surface ice patch might be exposed by one impact event, before which 133P may be an extinct comet (or ice-rich asteroid) with ice layer buried below $\sim$40 m depth. The proposed ice patch may be located somewhere within latitude $-50\sim50^\circ$ by comparing theoretical variation of sublimation temperature to the constraints from observations. The time scale to form such a thick dust mantle is estimated to be $>100$ Myr, indicating that 133P may be more likely to be a relatively old planetesimals or a member of an old family than a recently formed fragment of some young family.

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arXiv2019

A Twilight Search for Atiras, Vatiras and Co-orbital Asteroids: Preliminary Results

Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) that orbit the Sun on or within Earth's orbit are tricky to detect for Earth-based observers due to their proximity to the Sun in the sky. These small bodies hold clues to the dynamical history of the inner solar system as well as the physical evolution of planetesimals in extreme environments. Populations in this region include the Atira and Vatira asteroids, as well as Venus and Earth co-orbital asteroids. Here we present a twilight search for these small bodies, conducted using the 1.2-m Oschin Schmidt and the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) camera at Palomar Observatory. The ZTF twilight survey operates at solar elongations down to $35^\circ$ with limiting magnitude of $r=19.5$. During a total of 40 evening sessions and 62 morning sessions conducted between 2018 November 15 and 2019 June 23, we detected 6 Atiras, including 2 new discoveries 2019 AQ$_3$ and 2019 LF$_6$, but no Vatiras or Earth/Venus co-orbital asteroids. NEO population models show that these new discoveries are likely only the tip of the iceberg, with the bulk of the population yet to be found. The population models also suggest that we have only detected 5--$7\%$ of the $H<20$ Atira population over the 7-month survey. Co-orbital asteroids are smaller in diameters and require deeper surveys. A systematic and efficient survey of the near-Sun region will require deeper searches and/or facilities that can operate at small solar elongations.

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arXiv2019

Asteroid Discovery and Light Curve Extraction Using the Hough Transform -- A Rotation Period Study for Sub-Kilometer Main-Belt Asteroids

The intra-night trajectories of asteroids can be approximated by straight lines, and so are their intra-night detections. Therefore, the Hough transform, a line detecting algorithm, can be used to connect the line-up detections to find asteroids. We applied this algorithm to a high-cadence Pan-STARRS 1 (PS1) observation, which was originally designed to collect asteroid light curves for rotation period measurements (Chang et al., 2019). The algorithm recovered most of the known asteroids in the observing fields and, moreover, discovered 3574 new asteroids with magnitude mainly of 21.5 < w_p1 < 22.5 mag. This magnitude range is equivalent to sub-kilometer main-belt asteroids (MBAs), which usually lack of rotation period measurements due to their faintness. Using the light curves of the 3574 new asteroids, we obtained 122 reliable rotation periods, of which 13 are super-fast rotators (SRFs; i.e., rotation period of < 2 hr). The required cohesion to survive these SFRs range from tens to thousands of Pa, a value consistent with the known SFRs and the regolith on the Moon and Mars. The higher chance of discovering SFRs here suggests that sub-kilometer MBAs probably harbor more SFRs.

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arXiv2019

Towards Efficient Detection of Small Near-Earth Asteroids Using the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF)

We describe ZStreak, a semi-real-time pipeline specialized in detecting small, fast-moving near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) that is currently operating on the data from the newly-commissioned Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) survey. Based on a prototype originally developed by Waszczak et al. (2017) for the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF), the predecessor of ZTF, ZStreak features an improved machine-learning model that can cope with the $10\times$ data rate increment between PTF and ZTF. Since its first discovery on 2018 February 5 (2018 CL), ZTF/ZStreak has discovered $45$ confirmed new NEAs over a total of 232 observable nights until 2018 December 31. Most of the discoveries are small NEAs, with diameters less than $\sim100$ m. By analyzing the discovery circumstances, we find that objects having the first to last detection time interval under 2 hr are at risk of being lost. We will further improve real-time follow-up capabilities, and work on suppressing false positives using deep learning.

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arXiv2019

The Zwicky Transient Facility: System Overview, Performance, and First Results

The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) is a new optical time-domain survey that uses the Palomar 48-inch Schmidt telescope. A custom-built wide-field camera provides a 47 deg$^2$ field of view and 8 second readout time, yielding more than an order of magnitude improvement in survey speed relative to its predecessor survey, the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF). We describe the design and implementation of the camera and observing system. The ZTF data system at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center provides near-real-time reduction to identify moving and varying objects. We outline the analysis pipelines, data products, and associated archive. Finally, we present on-sky performance analysis and first scientific results from commissioning and the early survey. ZTF's public alert stream will serve as a useful precursor for that of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.

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arXiv2019

The Zwicky Transient Facility: Science Objectives

The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), a public-private enterprise, is a new time domain survey employing a dedicated camera on the Palomar 48-inch Schmidt telescope with a 47 deg$^2$ field of view and 8 second readout time. It is well positioned in the development of time domain astronomy, offering operations at 10% of the scale and style of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) with a single 1-m class survey telescope. The public surveys will cover the observable northern sky every three nights in g and r filters and the visible Galactic plane every night in g and r. Alerts generated by these surveys are sent in real time to brokers. A consortium of universities which provided funding ("partnership") are undertaking several boutique surveys. The combination of these surveys producing one million alerts per night allows for exploration of transient and variable astrophysical phenomena brighter than r $\sim$ 20.5 on timescales of minutes to years. We describe the primary science objectives driving ZTF including the physics of supernovae and relativistic explosions, multi-messenger astrophysics, supernova cosmology, active galactic nuclei and tidal disruption events, stellar variability, and Solar System objects.

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arXiv2019

Searching for Super-Fast Rotators Using the Pan-STARRS 1

A class of asteroids, called large super-fast rotators (large SFRs), have rotation periods shorter than 2 hours and diameters larger than ~ 0.3 km. They pose challenges to the usual interior rubble-pile structure unless a relatively high bulk density is assumed. So far, only six large SFRs have been found. Therefore, we present a survey of asteroid rotation period using Pan-STARRS 1 telescopes during 2016 October 26 to 31 to search more large SFRs and study their properties. A total of 876 reliable rotation periods are measured, among which seven are large SFRs, thereby increasing the inventory of known large SFRs. These seven newly discovered large SFRs have diverse colors and locations in the main asteroid belt, suggesting that the taxonomic tendency and the location preference in the inner main belt of the six perviously known large SFRs could be a bias due to various observational limits. Interestingly, five out of the seven newly discovered large SFRs are mid main-belt asteroids. Considering the rare discovery rates of large SFR in the previously similar surveys (Chang et al., 2015, 2016) and the survey condition in this work, the chance of detecting a large SFR in the inner main belt seems to be relatively low. This probably suggests that the inner main belt harbors less large SFRs than the mid main belt. From our survey, we also found the drop in number appearing at f > 5 rev/day on the spin-rate distribution for the outer main-belt asteroids of D < 3 km, which was reported for the inner and mid main belt by (Chang et al., 2015, 2016).

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arXiv2018

The effect of carbon grain destruction on the chemical structure of protoplanetary disks

The bulk composition of the Earth is dramatically carbon poor compared to that of the interstellar medium, and this phenomenon extends to the asteroid belt. To interpret this carbon deficit problem, the carbonaceous component in grains must have been converted into the gas-phase in the inner regions of protoplanetary disks prior to planetary formation. We examine the effect of carbon grain destruction on the chemical structure of disks by calculating the molecular abundances and distributions using a comprehensive chemical reaction network. When carbon grains are destroyed and the elemental abundance of the gas becomes carbon-rich, the abundances of carbon-bearing molecules, such as HCN and carbon-chain molecules, increase dramatically near the midplane, while oxygen-bearing molecules, such as H$_2$O and CO$_2$, are depleted. We compare the results of these model calculations with the solid carbon fraction in the solar system. Although we find a carbon depletion gradient, there are some quantitative discrepancies: the model shows a higher value at the position of asteroid belt and a lower value at the location of the Earth. In addition, using the obtained molecular abundances distributions, coupled with line radiative transfer calculations, we make predictions for ALMA to potentially observe the effect of carbon grain destruction in nearby protoplanetary disks. The results indicate that HCN, H$^{13}$CN and c-C$_3$H$_2$ may be good tracers.

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arXiv2018

What mechanisms dominate the activity of Geminid Parent (3200) Phaethon?

A long-term sublimation model to explain how Phaethon could provide the Geminid stream is proposed. We find that it would take $\sim6$ Myr or more for Phaethon to lose all of its internal ice (if ever there was) in its present orbit. Thus, if the asteroid moved from the region of a 5:2 or 8:3 mean motion resonance with Jupiter to its present orbit less than $1$ Myr ago, it may have retained much of its primordial ice. The dust mantle on the sublimating body should have a thickness of at least $15$ m but the mantle could have been less than $1$ m thick $1000$ years ago. We find that the total gas production rate could have been as large as $10^{27}\rm~s^{-1}$ then, and the gas flow could have been capable of lifting dust particles of up to a few centimeters in size. Therefore, gas production during the past millennium could have been sufficient to blow away enough dust particles to explain the entire Geminid stream. For present-day Phaethon, the gas production is comparatively weak. But strong transient gas release with a rate of $\sim4.5\times10^{19}\rm~m^{-2}s^{-1}$ is expected for its south polar region when Phaethon moves from $0^\circ$ to $2^\circ$ mean anomaly near perihelion. Consequently, dust particles with radii of $<\sim260~μm$ can be blown away to form a dust tail. In addition, we find that the large surface temperature variation of $>600$ K near perihelion can generate sufficiently large thermal stress to cause fracture of rocks or boulders and provide an efficient mechanism to produce dust particles on the surface. The time scale for this process should be several times longer than the seasonal thermal cycle, thereby dominating the cycle of appearance of the dust tail.

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arXiv2018

OSSOS. VII. 800+ trans-Neptunian objects - the complete data release

The Outer Solar System Origins Survey (OSSOS), a wide-field imaging program in 2013-2017 with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, surveyed 155 deg$^{2}$ of sky to depths of $m_r = 24.1$-25.2. We present 838 outer Solar System discoveries that are entirely free of ephemeris bias. This increases the inventory of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) with accurately known orbits by nearly 50%. Each minor planet has 20-60 Gaia/Pan-STARRS-calibrated astrometric measurements made over 2-5 oppositions, which allows accurate classification of their orbits within the trans-Neptunian dynamical populations. The populations orbiting in mean-motion resonance with Neptune are key to understanding Neptune's early migration. Our 313 resonant TNOs, including 132 plutinos, triple the available characterized sample and include new occupancy of distant resonances out to semi-major axis $a \sim 130$ au. OSSOS doubles the known population of the non-resonant Kuiper belt, providing 436 TNOs in this region, all with exceptionally high-quality orbits of $a$ uncertainty $σ_{a} \leq 0.1\%$; they show the belt exists from $a \gtrsim 37$ au, with a lower perihelion bound of $35$ au. We confirm the presence of a concentrated low-inclination $a\simeq 44$ au "kernel" population and a dynamically cold population extending beyond the 2:1 resonance. We finely quantify the survey's observational biases. Our survey simulator provides a straightforward way to impose these biases on models of the trans-Neptunian orbit distributions, allowing statistical comparison to the discoveries. The OSSOS TNOs, unprecedented in their orbital precision for the size of the sample, are ideal for testing concepts of the history of giant planet migration in the Solar System.

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arXiv2017

Thermophysical characteristics of the large main-belt asteroid (349) Dembowska

(349) Dembowska, a large, bright main-belt asteroid, has a fast rotation and oblique spin axis. It may have experienced partial melting and differentiation. We constrain Dembowska's thermophysical properties, e.g., thermal inertia, roughness fraction, geometric albedo and effective diameter within 3$σ$ uncertainty of $Γ=20^{+12}_{-7}\rm~Jm^{-2}s^{-0.5}K^{-1}$, $f_{\rm r}=0.25^{+0.60}_{-0.25}$, $p_{\rm v}=0.309^{+0.026}_{-0.038}$, and $D_{\rm eff}=155.8^{+7.5}_{-6.2}\rm~km$, by utilizing the Advanced Thermophysical Model (ATPM) to analyse four sets of thermal infrared data obtained by IRAS, AKARI, WISE and Subaru/COMICS at different epochs. In addition, by modeling the thermal lightcurve observed by WISE, we obtain the rotational phases of each dataset. These rotationally resolved data do not reveal significant variations of thermal inertia and roughness across the surface, indicating the surface of Dembowska should be covered by a dusty regolith layer with few rocks or boulders. Besides, the low thermal inertia of Dembowska show no significant difference with other asteroids larger than 100 km, indicating the dynamical lives of these large asteroids are long enough to make the surface to have sufficiently low thermal inertia. Furthermore, based on the derived surface thermophysical properties, as well as the known orbital and rotational parameters, we can simulate Dembowska's surface and subsurface temperature throughout its orbital period. The surface temperature varies from $\sim40$ K to $\sim220$ K, showing significant seasonal variation, whereas the subsurface temperature achieves equilibrium temperature about $120\sim160$ K below $30\sim50$ cm depth.

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arXiv2017

Machine Learning Based Real Bogus System for HSC-SSP Moving Object Detecting Pipeline

Machine learning techniques are widely applied in many modern optical sky surveys, e.q. Pan-STARRS1, PTF/iPTF and Subaru/Hyper Suprime-Cam survey, to reduce human intervention for data verification. In this study, we have established a machine learning based real-bogus system to reject the false detections in the Subaru/Hyper-Suprime-Cam StrategicSurvey Program (HSC-SSP) source catalog. Therefore the HSC-SSP moving object detection pipeline can operate more effectively due to the reduction of false positives. To train the real-bogus system, we use the stationary sources as the real training set and the "flagged" data as the bogus set. The training set contains 47 features, most of which are photometric measurements and shape moments generated from the HSC image reduction pipeline (hscPipe). Our system can reach a true positive rate (tpr) ~96% with a false positive rate (fpr) ~ 1% or tpr ~99% at fpr ~5%. Therefore we conclude that the stationary sources are decent real training samples, and using photometry measurements and shape moments can reject the false positives effectively.

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arXiv2017

Confirmation of Large Super-Fast Rotator (144977) 2005 EC127

(144977) 2005 EC127 is an V-/A-type inner-main-belt asteroid with a diameter of 0.6 +- 0.1 km. Asteroids of this size are believed to have rubble-pile structure, and, therefore, cannot have a rotation period shorter than 2.2 hours. However, our measurements show that asteroid 2005 EC127 completes one rotation in 1.65 +- 0.01 hours with a peak-to-peak light-curve variation of ~0.5 mag. Therefore, this asteroid is identified as a large super-fast rotator. Either a rubble-pile asteroid with a bulk density of ~6 g cm^-3 or an asteroid with an internal cohesion of 47 +- 30 Pa can explain 2005 EC127. However, the scenario of high bulk density is very unlikely for asteroids. To date, only six large super-fast rotators, including 2005 EC127, have been reported, and this number is very small when compared with the much more numerous fast rotators. We also note that none of the six reported large SFRs are classified as C-type asteroids.

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arXiv2017

Surface thermophysical properties investigation of the potentially hazardous asteroid (99942) Apophis

In this work, we investigate the surface thermophysical properties (thermal emissivity, thermal inertia, roughness fraction and geometric albedo) of asteroid (99942) Apophis, using the currently available thermal infrared observations of CanariCam on Gran Telescopio CANARIAS and far-infrared data by PACS of Herschel, on the basis of the Advanced thermophysical model. We show that the thermal emissivity of Apophis should be wavelength dependent from $8.70~μm$ to $160~μm$, and the maximum emissivity may arise around $20~μm$ similar to that of Vesta. Moreover, we further derive the thermal inertia, roughness fraction, geometric albedo and effective diameter of Apophis within a possible 1$σ$ scale of $Γ=100^{+100}_{-52}\rm~Jm^{-2}s^{-0.5}K^{-1}$, $f_{\rm r}=0.78\sim1.0$, $p_{\rm v}=0.286^{+0.030}_{-0.026}$, $D_{\rm eff}=378^{+19}_{-25}\rm~m$, and 3$σ$ scale of $Γ=100^{+240}_{-100}\rm~Jm^{-2}s^{-0.5}K^{-1}$, $f_{\rm r}=0.2\sim1.0$, $p_{\rm v}=0.286^{+0.039}_{-0.029}$, $D_{\rm eff}=378^{+27}_{-29}\rm~m$. The derived low thermal inertia but high roughness fraction may imply that Apophis could have regolith on its surface, and less regolith migration process has happened in comparison with asteroid Itokawa. Our results show that small-size asteroids could also have fine regolith on the surface, and further infer that Apophis may be delivered from the Main Belt by Yarkovsky effect.

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arXiv2016

Palomar Transient Factory and RR Lyrae: Metallicity-Light Curve Relation Based on ab-Type RR Lyrae in Kepler Field

The wide-field synoptic sky surveys, known as the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) and the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF), will accumulate a large number of known and new RR Lyrae. These RR Lyrae are good tracers to study the substructure of the Galactic halo if their distance, metallicity, and galactocentric velocity can be measured. Candidates of halo RR Lyrae can be identified from their distance and metallicity before requesting spectroscopic observations for confirmation. This is because both quantities can be obtained via their photometric light curves, because the absolute V-band magnitude for RR Lyrae is correlated with metallicity, and the metallicity can be estimated using a metallicity-light curve relation. To fully utilize the PTF and iPTF light-curve data in related future work, it is necessary to derive the metallicity-light curve relation in the native PTF/iPTF R-band photometric system. In this work, we derived such a relation using the known ab-type RR Lyrae located in the Kepler field, and it is found to be $[Fe/H]_{PTF} = -4.089 - 7.346 P + 1.280 ϕ_{31}$ (where $P$ is pulsational period and $ϕ_{31}$ is one of the Fourier parameters describing the shape of the light curve), with a dispersion of 0.118 dex. We tested our metallicity-light curve relation with new spectroscopic observations of a few RR Lyrae in the Kepler field, as well as several data sets available in the literature. Our tests demonstrated that the derived metallicity-light curve relation could be used to estimate metallicities for the majority of the RR Lyrae, which are in agreement with the published values.

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