Tuesday, January 29, 2013

1301.6165 (Andrew Gould et al.)

Microlens Surveys are a Powerful Probe of Asteroids    [PDF]

Andrew Gould, Jennifer C. Yee
While of order a million asteroids have been discovered, the number in rigorously controlled samples that have precise orbits and rotation periods, as well as well-measured colors, is relatively small. In particular, less than a dozen main-belt asteroids with estimated diameters D<3km, have excellent rotation periods. We show how existing and soon-to-be-acquired microlensing data can yield a large asteroid sample with precise orbits and rotation periods, which will include roughly 6% of all asteroids with maximum brightness I<18.4 and lying within 10deg of the ecliptic. This sample will be dominated by small and very small asteroids, down to D~1km.
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.6165

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