Asteroid Confusions with Extremely Large Telescopes

TL;DR

This paper discusses the impact of asteroid detections on survey astronomy with large telescopes and space observatories, highlighting the number of asteroids detectable and the importance of their identification.

Contribution

It estimates asteroid detection rates for extremely large telescopes and space missions, emphasizing the need for effective identification in survey data.

Findings

E-ELT-like telescopes will detect 10,000-20,000 asteroids per square degree at low ecliptic latitudes.

Infrared space observatories like Spitzer and Herschel will detect around 100,000 asteroids serendipitously.

Asteroid detection is crucial for managing contamination and confusion noise in astronomical surveys.

Abstract

Asteroids can be considered as sources of contamination of point sources and also sources of confusion noise, depending whether their presence is detected in the image or their flux is under the detection limit. We estimate that at low ecliptic latitudes, ~10,000--20,000 asteroids/sq. degree will be detected with an E-ELT like telescope, while by the end of Spitzer and Herschel missions, infrared space observatories will provide ~100,000 serendipitous asteroid detections. The detection and identification of asteroids is therefore an important step in survey astronomy.