Detection Efficiency of Asteroid Surveys

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the detection efficiency of nine major asteroid surveys over two decades, providing detailed nightly efficiency curves and modeling their performance as a function of telescope aperture.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive, quantitative analysis of asteroid survey detection efficiencies, including magnitude limits and performance modeling across different telescopes.

Findings

Detection efficiency varies with apparent magnitude and velocity.

Each survey's limiting magnitude distribution is characterized.

Efficiency modeling as a function of telescope aperture is provided.

Abstract

A comprehensive characterization of the detection efficiency of nine of the major asteroid surveys that have been active over the past two decades is presented. The detection efficiency is estimated on a nightly basis by comparing the detected asteroids with the complete catalog of known asteroids propagated to the same observing epoch. Results include a nightly estimate of the detection efficiency curves as a function of apparent magnitude and apparent velocity of the asteroids, as well as a cumulative analysis to estimate the overall performance of each survey. The limiting magnitude distribution is estimated for each survey, and it is then modeled as a function of telescope aperture to obtain an estimate over a wide range of apertures.