Small and Nearby NEOs Observed by NEOWISE During the First Three Years of Survey: Physical Properties

TL;DR

This paper reports on the discovery of new physical properties for 116 near-Earth objects using reanalyzed NEOWISE infrared data, revealing details about their sizes and reflectivity.

Contribution

It introduces a method of searching archived full-frame NEOWISE data for previously unreported NEOs and derives their physical properties through thermal modeling.

Findings

Physical properties for 116 NEOs are reported.

New thermal infrared data enhances understanding of NEO sizes and albedos.

Archival data search uncovers previously unreported NEOs.

Abstract

Automated asteroid detection routines set requirements on the number of detections, signal-to-noise ratio, and the linearity of the expected motion in order to balance completeness, reliability, and time delay after data acquisition when identifying moving object tracklets. However, when the full-frame data from a survey are archived, they can be searched later for asteroids that were below the initial detection thresholds. We have conducted such a search of the first three years of the reactivated NEOWISE data, looking for near-Earth objects discovered by ground-based surveys that have previously unreported thermal infrared data. Using these measurements, we can then perform thermal modeling to measure the diameters and albedos of these objects. We present new physical properties for 116 Near-Earth Objects found in this search.