Title

Low Perihelion Near-Earth Asteroids

Authors

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