A million asteroid observations in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

TL;DR

This paper presents a large catalog of over 1.5 million asteroid observations from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, significantly expanding the dataset available for studying Solar System small bodies' origins and evolution.

Contribution

It introduces a method to extract and validate a vast number of asteroid observations from archival SDSS data, including many previously unlinked sources.

Findings

Catalog contains 1,036,322 observations of 379,714 known SSOs.

Achieved approximately 95% completeness and over 95% purity for known SSOs.

Discovered 506,200 observations of new moving sources not linked to known SSOs.

Abstract

Context. The populations of small bodies of the Solar System (asteroids, comets, Kuiper-Belt objects) are used to constrain the origin and evolution of the Solar System. Both their orbital distribution and composition distribution are required to track the dynamical pathway from their regions of formation to their current locations. Aims. We aim at increasing the sample of Solar System objects that have multi-filter photometry and compositional taxonomy. Methods. We search for moving objects in the archive of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We attempt at maximizing the number of detections by using loose constraints on the extraction. We then apply a suite of filters to remove false-positive detections (stars or galaxies) and mark out spurious photometry and astrometry. Results. We release a catalog of 1 542 522 entries, consisting of 1 036 322 observations of 379 714 known and unique SSOs together with 506 200 observations of moving sources not linked with any known SSOs. The catalog completeness is estimated to be about 95% and the purity to be above 95% for known SSOs.