Asteroid lightcurves and detection, shape, and size biases in large-scale surveys

TL;DR

This paper investigates how elongated asteroids can be detected in large-scale surveys beyond their sensitivity limits, revealing biases in size and shape distributions due to lightcurve amplitude effects.

Contribution

It introduces a model for detecting elongated asteroids beyond sensitivity limits and highlights biases in population property estimations.

Findings

Asteroids up to 1 magnitude fainter can be detected.

Detection bias affects size and shape distribution estimates.

Lightcurve amplitude influences detection likelihood.

Abstract

Most asteroids are somewhat elongated and have non-zero lightcurve amplitudes. Such asteroids can be detected in large-scale sky surveys even if their mean magnitudes are fainter than the stated sensitivity limits. We explore the detection of elongated asteroids under a set of idealized but useful approximations. We find that objects up to 1 magnitude fainter than a survey's sensitivity limit are likely to be detected, and that the effect is most pronounced for asteroids with lightcurve amplitudes 0.1-0.4 mag.This imposes a bias on the derived size and shape distributions of the population that must be properly accounted for.