Detectability of the Yarkovsky Effect in the Main Belt

TL;DR

This study investigates the detectability of the Yarkovsky effect on main belt asteroids, finding current observations insufficient but suggesting future surveys could enable detection within decades.

Contribution

It provides an analysis of observational requirements and future prospects for detecting the Yarkovsky effect in main belt asteroids.

Findings

No reliable Yarkovsky detections in current data

Minimum observational arc length exceeds current observations

Future surveys like LSST may detect the effect within decades

Abstract

We attempt to a detect signal of Yarkovsky-related acceleration in the orbits of 134 main belt asteroids (MBAs) we observed with the University of Hawai'i 88 inch telescope, supplemented with observations publicly available from the Minor Planet Center and Gaia Data Release 3. We estimated expected Yarkovsky acceleration values based on parameters derived through thermophysical modeling, but we were not able to find any reliable detections of Yarkovsky in our sample. Through tests with synthetic observations however, we estimated the minimum observational arc length needed to detect the Yarkovsky effect for all of our sample MBAs, which in nearly every case exceeded the current arc length of the existing observations. We find that the Yarkovsky effect could be detectable within a couple of decades of discovery for a 100 m MBA assuming 0.1" astrometric accuracy, which is at the size range detectable by the upcoming Vera Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time.