A family-based method of quantifying NEOWISE diameter errors

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel family-based approach to estimate NEOWISE asteroid diameter errors, demonstrating that the typical error is under 17.5%, with a 10% error for common H magnitude uncertainties.

Contribution

It presents a new method for bounding NEOWISE diameter errors using asteroid family albedo data, improving error estimation accuracy.

Findings

1 sigma relative diameter error is less than 17.5% for most Main Belt asteroids.

Typical diameter error is around 10% with 0.2 mag H magnitude uncertainty.

The method offers a different approach from previous independent diameter comparisons.

Abstract

Quantifying the accuracy with which physical properties of asteroids can be determined from thermal modeling is critical to measuring the impact of infrared data on our understanding of asteroids. Previous work (Mainzer et al. 2011b) has used independently-derived diameters (from asteroid radar, occultations, and spacecraft visits) to test the accuracy of the NEOWISE diameter determinations. Here, we present a new and different method for bounding the actual NEOWISE diameter errors in the Main Belt based on our knowledge of the albedos of asteroid families. We show the 1 sigma relative diameter error for the Main Belt population must be less than 17.5% for the vast majority of objects. For a typical uncertainty on H magnitude of 0.2 mag, the relative error on diameter for the population would be ~10%.