NEOSurvey 1: Initial results from the Warm Spitzer Exploration Science Survey of Near Earth Object Properties

TL;DR

This paper reports initial results from the NEOSurvey, a Warm Spitzer program measuring diameters and albedos of 80 NEOs, creating a large, uniform catalog to improve understanding of near-Earth objects.

Contribution

It introduces a new flux-limited survey of 597 NEOs using Warm Spitzer, providing a uniform dataset of their physical properties and updates to thermal modeling techniques.

Findings

Derived diameters and albedos for 80 NEOs.

Cross-check with NEOWISE data for a subset.

Identified key sources of error in thermal modeling.

Abstract

Near Earth Objects (NEOs) are small Solar System bodies whose orbits bring them close to the Earth's orbit. We are carrying out a Warm Spitzer Cycle 11 Exploration Science program entitled NEOSurvey --- a fast and efficient flux-limited survey of 597 known NEOs in which we derive diameter and albedo for each target. The vast majority of our targets are too faint to be observed by NEOWISE, though a small sample has been or will be observed by both observatories, which allows for a cross-check of our mutual results. Our primary goal is to create a large and uniform catalog of NEO properties. We present here the first results from this new program: fluxes and derived diameters and albedos for 80 NEOs, together with a description of the overall program and approach, including several updates to our thermal model. The largest source of error in our diameter and albedo solutions, which derive from our single band thermal emission measurements, is uncertainty in eta, the beaming parameter used in our thermal modeling; for albedos, improvements in Solar System absolute magnitudes would also help significantly. All data and derived diameters and albedos from this entire program are being posted on a publicly accessible webpage at nearearthobjects.nau.edu .