Preliminary Results from NEOWISE: An Enhancement to the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer for Solar System Science

TL;DR

NEOWISE enhances the WISE infrared survey data processing to detect and catalog small Solar System bodies, significantly expanding the known population of asteroids, comets, and NEOs for scientific research.

Contribution

This paper introduces NEOWISE, an enhancement to WISE data processing that enables detection of moving objects in the Solar System, providing a large new dataset for planetary science.

Findings

Over 157,000 asteroids identified, including 500+ NEOs.

Detection of approximately 120 comets.

Enhanced infrared survey data for Solar System objects.

Abstract

The \emph{Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer} has surveyed the entire sky at four infrared wavelengths with greatly improved sensitivity and spatial resolution compared to its predecessors, the \emph{Infrared Astronomical Satellite} and the \emph{Cosmic Background Explorer}. NASA's Planetary Science Division has funded an enhancement to the \WISE\ data processing system called "NEOWISE" that allows detection and archiving of moving objects found in the \WISE\ data. NEOWISE has mined the \WISE\ images for a wide array of small bodies in our Solar System, including Near-Earth Objects (NEOs), Main Belt asteroids, comets, Trojans, and Centaurs. By the end of survey operations in February 2011, NEOWISE identified over 157,000 asteroids, including more than 500 NEOs and $\sim$120 comets. The NEOWISE dataset will enable a panoply of new scientific investigations.