54 research outputs found
A Comparative Study of Infrared Asteroid Surveys: IRAS, AKARI, and WISE
We present a comparative study of three infrared asteroid surveys based on
the size and albedo data from the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS), the
Japanese infrared satellite AKARI, and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer
(WISE). Our study showed that: (i) the total number of asteroids detected with
diameter and albedo information with these three surveyors is 138,285, which is
largely contributed by WISE; (ii) the diameters and albedos measured by the
three surveyors for 1,993 commonly detected asteroids are in good agreement,
and within +/-10% in diameter and +/-22% in albedo at 1sigma deviation level.
It is true that WISE offers size and albedo of a large fraction (>20%) of known
asteroids down to a few km bodies, but we would suggest that the IRAS and AKARI
catalogs compensate for larger asteroids up to several hundred km, especially
in the main belt region. We discuss the complementarity of these three catalogs
in order to facilitate the use of these data sets for characterizing the
physical properties of minor planets.Comment: 21 pages, 19 figures, and 2 tables, accepted for publication in PAS
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