Low Perihelion Near-Earth Asteroids

    Authors

    H. Campins; M. S. Kelley; Y. Fernandez; J. Licandro;K. Hargrove

    Comments

    Authors: contact us about adding a copy of your work at STARS@ucf.edu

    Abbreviated Journal Title

    Earth Moon Planets

    Keywords

    Asteroids; Infrared spectra; Surface composition; Orbital dynamics; SPITZER-SPACE-TELESCOPE; THERMAL-MODEL; Astronomy & Astrophysics; Geosciences, Multidisciplinary

    Abstract

    We present initial results from a study of a sample of low-perihelion near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) using the Infrared Spectrograph (IRS) on NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The 7-14 mu m thermal emission spectra have been fitted with models of the thermal continuum to derive the asteroid's effective diameter, geometric albedo and beaming parameter eta. In this work, we concentrate on the thermal behavior and we find a trend of increasing eta (lower thermal fluxes and cooler color temperatures) with increasing solar phase angle. The slope of this trend is somewhat different from that reported for other NEAs (e.g., Delb 2004); if confirmed, this result would indicate that the thermal behavior of low-perihelion asteroids is different from that of other members of the NEA population. In addition, deviations of the observed continuum from the thermal model, which can be diagnostic of composition, are apparent in a few of our targets. A complete characterization of these intrinsically faint objects will benefit from the large ground based facilities described elsewhere in these proceedings.

    Journal Title

    Earth Moon and Planets

    Volume

    105

    Issue/Number

    2-4

    Publication Date

    1-1-2009

    Document Type

    Article; Proceedings Paper

    Language

    English

    First Page

    159

    Last Page

    165

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000268776300015

    ISSN

    0167-9295

    Share

    COinS