Physical Properties of Asteroids in Comet-like Orbits in Infrared Asteroid Survey Catalogs

TL;DR

This study analyzes the physical properties of asteroids in comet-like orbits using infrared data, revealing their size, albedo, and possible origins, including Yarkovsky effect influences.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed characterization of asteroid populations in comet-like orbits using infrared surveys and identifies the influence of Yarkovsky drift on small, high-albedo objects.

Findings

123 asteroids in comet-like orbits identified

80% of these have low albedo similar to comet nuclei

Small, high-albedo asteroids likely drifted into orbits via Yarkovsky effect

Abstract

We investigated the population of asteroids in comet-like orbits using available asteroid size and albedo catalogs of data taken with the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, AKARI, and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer on the basis of their orbital properties (i.e., the Tisserand parameter with respect to Jupiter, TJ, and the aphelion distance, Q). We found that (i) there are 123 asteroids in comet-like orbits by our criteria (i.e., Q < 4.5 AU and TJ < 3), (ii) 80% of them have low albedo, pv < 0.1, consistent with comet nuclei, (iii) low-albedo objects among them have a size distribution shallower than that of active comet nuclei, that is, the power index of the cumulative size distribution of around 1.1, (iv) unexpectedly, a considerable number (i.e., 25 by our criteria) of asteroids in comet-like orbits have high albedo, pv > 0.1. We noticed that such high-albedo objects mostly consist of small (D < 3 km) bodies distributed in near-Earth space (with perihelion distance of q < 1.3 AU). We suggest that such high-albedo, small objects were susceptible to the Yarkovsky effect and drifted into comet-like orbits via chaotic resonances with planets.