Type: Poster
Session: Posters (Monday & Tuesday)
Author: Elana Selmi

Abstract: Near Earth Asteroids (NEA) are of great interest to the scientific community due to their proximity to Earth, making them both potential hazards and possible targets for future missions, as they’re relatively easy to reach by spacecraft. The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has scanned the sky since 2010 at different wavelengths, discovering hundreds of new NEOs and expanding the observation dataset of previously known ones. In this project, we recover all observational epochs for a list of asteroids and run a thermophysical model utilizing Monte Carlo Markov Chain (MCMC) simulations to fit diameter, albedo, thermal inertia and period. Results for most targets are used in conjunction with those obtained by other groups utilizing polarimetry data and improved measurements of the H absolute magnitude, to build comprehensive assessments of these asteroids. In parallel, we search for previously missed detections of NEAs in NEOWISE’s Year 9 data and report them to the Minor Planet Center (MPC). This helps to expand further the database of epochs available for future research on NEOs and allows to fully take advantage of the data already collected by WISE. Over its 10 year lifespan, LSST is expected to observe over 100,000 NEOs, with many of these receiving hundreds of observations in multiple bandpasses. Although the instrument’s limited reach in the infrared lowers the effectiveness of thermophysical models, the significant expansion of the known NEO population with constrained orbits (thanks to the multiple observations) will be fundamental to help future infrared telescopes, such as the upcoming NEO Surveyor, to reach their full potential.