Title

Low Perihelion Near-Earth Asteroids

Keywords

Asteroids; Infrared spectra; Orbital dynamics; Surface composition

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 μm thermal emission spectra have been fitted with models of the thermal continuum to derive the asteroid's effective diameter, geometric albedo and beaming parameter η. In this work, we concentrate on the thermal behavior and we find a trend of increasing η (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., Delbó 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. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009.

Publication Date

6-3-2009

Publication Title

Earth, Moon and Planets

Volume

105

Issue

2-4

Number of Pages

159-165

Document Type

Article; Proceedings Paper

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11038-009-9310-2

Socpus ID

69049093755 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/69049093755

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